Tag: star trek: tos

thefaceofbeau:

So my friends and I have been re-watching through all of TOS. Near the end of the series, in the episode ‘The Savage Curtain,’ a facsimile of Abraham Lincoln appears; a creation by an alien race that believes he actually is Abraham Lincoln. During a tour of the ship led by Kirk, he meets Uhura on the bridge.

The exchange that follows is one that we found especially empowering and profound. Lincoln addresses Uhura as a ‘charming negress,’ realizes that using that word could be taken as an offense, and apologizes. Uhura answers;

“But why should I object to that term, sir? You see in our century, we’ve learned not to fear words.”

Lincoln replies, with the realization that he’s apologized where no offense was given, and Kirk follows up;

“We’ve each learned to be delighted with what we are.”

This is an exchange that was penned in 1969 as a very astute and clear social commentary, as was not unusual for the show. (After all, Star Trek is the show that gave us America’s first televised interracial kiss.) The ideas in this exchange, the message of self-acceptance, of reclaiming one’s own sense of self, even of reclaiming words that might have been twisted into insults through foolish prejudices, are ideas that are still relevant today, in 2015. They are ideas that will continue to be relevant for years to come, for centuries to come. We just need to learn to live by these ideas, and to spread them to everyone we can reach.