TNG: A Fistful of Datas

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

No, but historically speaking, the Old West (TM) had predominately mexican cowboys, native american cowboys, and chinese immigrant laborers. And we have no problem finding oodles of those actors when we need a slightly racist crowd scene. It makes as much sense as, well, if you had a holodeck program on the Enterprise where every single character was plaid by an Android.

[Madner Kami]

No, but historically speaking, the Old West (TM) had predominately mexican cowboys, native american cowboys, and chinese immigrant laborers. And we have no problem finding oodles of those actors when we need a slightly racist crowd scene. It makes as much sense as, well, if you had a holodeck program on the Enterprise where every single character was plaid by an Android.

Census records speak a different language. Most cowboys were actually white, with about 15-30% mexicans/hispanics, about 15-20% black and only really late into the busines any sort of single digit percentage of native americans (obviously depending on the region in question, the percentages can vary). Also, in regard to the straight/gay comment portion earlier, while homosexuality was probably far more widely spread in cowboy circles than in other social circles, thanks to circumstance, it still wasn't the norm. Cowboy culture in itself is deeply homophobic and various laws against homosexual acts, make it clear that it wasn't a welcome or openly displayed thing, probably being much like what is/was going on in the US military, as long as you don't parade around, nobody cares and as such, it wasn't paraded around.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Huh. I stand corrected. I guess I'll have to look further into this matter.

[Koshundheit]

Huh. I stand corrected. I guess I'll have to look further into this matter.

You might find the below link interesting. I recalled reading it before, so it wasn't hard to find. I am both amused and saddened at the idea that the old west may have been more tolerant of homosexual activity than was the more modern USA throughout much of the last century.
https://truewestmagazine.com/old-west-h ... the-range/

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well, people like to downplay how inclusive or progressive the past was because it makes it easier to defend the status quo. "You may think you have it rough now, but in the Bad Old Days you would have it so much worse, so be happy and stop protesting!"

[clearspira]

Well, people like to downplay how inclusive or progressive the past was because it makes it easier to defend the status quo. "You may think you have it rough now, but in the Bad Old Days you would have it so much worse, so be happy and stop protesting!"

Its also becomes a lot easier to blame past evils on white heterosexual men if we ignore all of those examples of blacks, gays and women being successful. The media loves a bogeyman to focus its attention on.

[chaos42]

the irony is that many of those same people- caucasian males-read wild west story - old grumpy men. I work in a book store thats the main customer who buy westerns. to the point it has its own section. consider that the store has fiction divided into fiction, romance, sci-fi fantasy, westerns. (this is novels i should mention) and the westerns are the smallest section but it gets shopped a lot by old farts looking for a louis lamor novel.

[Madner Kami]

Huh. I stand corrected. I guess I'll have to look further into this matter.

You might find the below link interesting. I recalled reading it before, so it wasn't hard to find. I am both amused and saddened at the idea that the old west may have been more tolerant of homosexual activity than was the more modern USA throughout much of the last century.

I wouldn't argue that it was more tolerant. You just have to look at the laws made to understand, that it was precisely not tolerated. It's just that people tend to be pragmatic about things. Out on the frontier, people are a scarce resource. You don't think long and hard about which colour or sexual orientation your potential (co-)worker or soldier has, you are just happy to have two more hands and if they are a bit strange or unusual, you just ignore it unless their behaviour becomes an unbearable problem. It's when people are a common resource, that people start to become selective about who they spend their time with and who they are willing to tolerate.

[cdrood]

As an IT professional this sort of episode really irks me. The idea of experimenting on production systems is idiotic. That's what isolated dev and qa environments are for. When that production system is responsible for maintaining the oxygen for 1000 people and possesses weaponry capable of leveling the Himalayas from orbit, it moves from idiotic to suicidal. Did it not occur to them to start with a shuttle craft, work up to a docked ship with it's weapons disabled, before messing with the the fleets top line ship?

[Deledrius]

As an IT professional this sort of episode really irks me. The idea of experimenting on production systems is idiotic. That's what isolated dev and qa environments are for. When that production system is responsible for maintaining the oxygen for 1000 people and possesses weaponry capable of leveling the Himalayas from orbit, it moves from idiotic to suicidal. Did it not occur to them to start with a shuttle craft, work up to a docked ship with it's weapons disabled, before messing with the the fleets top line ship?

That's the brilliance of the thematic connection between the A-plot and the B-plot! You see, Geordi and Data are cowboys too, shootin' from the hip!