Specism/Xenophobia in the EU and TOR.

''Specism'' is a neologism used to describe racism in settings where there are actually different ''races''

In SW as in many work, xenophobia toward aliens (or Humans) is often a metaphor for Earth's conflicts. There is nothing wrong about this, as this is a situation that the reader can understand and connect too.

However, the effort often falters, (very often in Trek, a little less often in Wars) when the writers take the metaphor too litteraly.

On Earth, racism is clearly wrong (I'm summarizing here) because there are no such thing as Human ''races'' .

On space, the basic premise is completely different, since there are different species. And in addition to that, the different species are often characterized in a very specific way . Saying ''X Human group is cowardly and greedy'' is racism, and the internal logic of the EU tell us that ''X specie is cowardly and greedy'' is as wrong-yet that's EXACTLY how the Neimodians are presented.

Am I missing something about this thread? Seems more like a blog post instead of a forum topic?

I think it's trying to communicate... what should we do?

No, this is about TOR, where xenophobia is a huge part of the Empire characterization.

I fail to see a point to any of this. Raise awareness for specism.

Are you saying that the purpose of having the Empire's specism being portrayed as morally wrong falls flat when the writers themselves use tropes and stereotypes about the affected species?

Exactly.

Prime example : the Twi'leks are slave in the Empire.

Well, they are slaves in the Republic too, and Hutt space...not to mention the omnipresent Twi'lek dancing girl (who is usually mentionned as liking her job), which is a very thinly veiled allusion to sexual slavery.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Same principle applies though. I could sit here and assert that a certain group of humans is greedy--let's make up a name and call them "Skittles." Now, I may personally encounter a lot of finance-obsessed Skittles, but it would be racist for me to assume all Skittles are greedy, even though personal experience and stereotypes of Skittlish culture both point to that conclusion.

The same stands true for specism. There may be many members of a culture that adopt a certain behavior, but it would be ignorant to assume that every member of that species behaves in that way and to pre-judge those individuals based on that.

As much as species stereotypes are reinforced throughout SWTOR, the writers also do a good job of deviating from them. I'm thinking of Guss Tuno at the moment, who breaks every stereotype you can think of--whether for his race or being jedi.

eem...? No. Slavery is illegal in the republic.
Slavery is only part of the Hutt and Sith Empires. And slavery in the sith empire is a lot worse than in hutt empire.