RINE'S PROFILE

As a note, I won't be discussing racism at all. Discrimination != Racism. Discrimination is the removal of rights and privileges from a group that expresses a certain trait that fits them in that group. Obviously, racism has led to and leads to discrimination in the past and present, but racism is not a prerequisite for discrimination, nor is homophobia, or any similar issues.

In the real world context, discrimination serves two purposes. One being the goal of preserving a privileged status of an established or powered group. Jim Crow laws in the Southern US served this purpose, to keep a privileged status of whites in those areas. This follows from the slavery that preceded it, which was supported even by poor whites who would never have a chance to own slaves. Why? Because even if they didn't directly profit, they felt superior to another group, and thus weren't the worst off in their positions. Jim Crow laws kept this up, and let's be fair, a lot of racism nowadays in the US stems from not wanting to be at the bottom of the totem pole. Tends to be a bad habit amongst humans to want to make sure someone has it worse than you. The other it serves is to separate a group from others, so they do not interact. This is more iffy on the morality of it, as in the modern day, we see discrimination all the time. I guarantee almost anyone you ask will answer "Discrimination is bad", but then you ask them if people with obvious tattoos can be discriminated against for job purposes, and I'm sure some will come up with times when that is ok. We generally agree it is ok with employers to discriminate against people as long as it is not because of certain reasons. Tattoos are ok to discriminate against, ethnicities aren't, in the modern context. A past example would be leper colonies, and they could easily be seen as reasonable discrimination. At the time, the medical community at the time, as it existed, though leprosy was a communicable disease that could not be cured. It stood to reason for people at the time that these people should be seperated into colonies so they could avoid spreading the disease. While nowadays we know it is curable and what causes it, at the time that was entirely reasonable discrimination.

Now, two examples of media where I think discrimination is addressed well, and show how we can use it effectively without overwhelming the story. In general though, a lot of media tends to use discrimination as a quick way to make one side easy to hate. This is where I think X-men does it terribly at times...they use mutants as an analogue for racism/homophobia/etc, and thus have mutants getting attacked by mobs...but let's be fair, the reason lynch mobs existed in the south was because of the perception that certain people were infringing on a privileged position, not because they could set an entire town on fire. I really never find it plausible that people would decide 'Oh hey, there's this person with unknown superpowers who could kill us all, lets go curbstomp them'. The same thing with media who exchange human racism for discrimination against a species without fully explaining it, especially when the species being discriminated against has means of removing themselves from that society.

In Mass Effect, they did an amazing job of writing a fully fleshed out sci-fi world, with lots of documentation on how many things in the world worked and aspects of the past and history. It was mostly optional to read, but it helped the world be fully fleshed out. First are the Korgan, who are a race of notoriously militaristic and aggressive reptilian beings. They are notably marginalized in galactic society, and generally thought of as deserving it. No point in the series plays that the Krogan really deserve to be treated as fluffy bunnies. There are good natured krogan you meet, though few, and two party members. However, the species deserves their reputation, given they waged war on the whole galaxy, destroyed their own planet with nuclear weapons, and the like. It is implied this is a predisposition in their race, as an Asari who has part of her genes affected by her Krogan parent is notably very aggressive in nature (and I think jokes about an urge to headbutt). They aren't shown as an evil species, but people are notably leery about having Krogan in places where you don't want to get headbutted. The other notable instance of discrimination is in the Asari species against Asari/Asari pairings. For those of you who don't know, the Asari in the universe are a mono-gendered race (who appear feminine to humans), and reproduce asexually by using another partner to add a mixer to their genes. In the modern asari society represented in the game world, children of two asari are generally treated poorly and have a lot of negative connotations. This is because as opposed to mixing with other species, asari/asari pairings have a chance to create a genetic defect that create a vampire-like individual. While one of the characters in game is a child of such a pairing, and mentions how she was treated, given the proclivity of such pairings to create such individuals, it is understandable the stigma that occurs.

More analogous to modern times is the game Read Only Memories. If you haven't played it, you should, it is an amazing story, with lots of fully realized characters and a well detailed world. The world of ROM is ours, just a few years in the future and a bit more cyber-punky. Cybernetics are a thing now, as are genetic therapies. The genetic therapies mentioned tend to involve applying animal genes to humans. Quite a few characters have notably had this done, given they sport animal ears, scales, etc. There are mentions of a legal act passed to prevent people over a certain amount of animal genes from breeding, and there are groups who invoke modern movements, that want to keep 'Humans human', and are against genetic modifications. When you deal with the group, mostly through their frontman, they aren't frothing lunatics, and the leader comes off as well reasoned and affable, if a bit smarmy. Other characters with cybernetics mention they oppose those groups mostly because they know who they're going to go after next. A fairly major character puts it in a lot of context, as she had to get treatment for cancer with shark genes. This left her looking 'like a creature from a horror movie', so she had further treatment so at least she would look pleasant (in game she is represented as a mostly humanoid fox-like woman), which put her over the genetic limit for breeding. The insurance company paying for her eggs to be preserved had them destroyed, and thus now she spends all her time (and considerable lawyer skills) fighting for rights of people who are genetically modified, and sometimes using her contacts in the ghetto-like communities they have to organize protests and riots. Read only memories is an amazing story, mostly because all of this fairly heavy stuff is in the background of the world. It doesn't relate to the main story too much, but the characters are well written so that when you ask this character about it (she generally comes off as a bitch whenever you talk to her), it informs on her character, as opposed to being just an info-dump.