Anti-Alien Racism in the Rebel Alliance?

[Big Orange]

While the Galactic Empire has the appearance of xenophobia judging from its homogenious staff onboard Imperial Navy flagships and the Imperial military/political leadership, do you think the Rebel Alliance are also racist to a certain extent even if they have more non-humans serving in its ranks? While the EU has overplayed the Empire's evil up to cardboard panto villain proportions, I wouldn't be surprised if the Galactic Empire distributed anti-alien propaganda through schools and the mass media, while the Galactic Empire's military likely indocrinated into its young recruits a feeling of detached aloofness, especially towards non-humanoids. The Seperatist leadership being dominated by alien merchants and rulers wouldn't have helped either.

And for Imperial personnel defecting to the Rebel Alliance the negative feelings generated by omnipresent Imperial propaganda would've been hard to dispell and even for civilians recruits who were subjected to the "Us Vs. Them" sentiments generated by Imperial officials they used to pay their taxes to. And the Galactic Empire did not happen over night, since most of the Empire's components were already long in place for Emperor Palpatine to put together: the Old Republic was already human centric and its core leadership was dominated by humans, with the Core Worlds historically colonized by human civilizations. The Core Worlds' own armies, navies, and police forces that eventually formed the back bone of the Galactic Empire's behemoth military must've harboured anti-alien sentiments going back millennia, although more authoritarian individuals like Wilful Tarkin would've been thankfully constrained by the Old Republic's more fragmented, smaller, and regionalized military forces.

And on the subject of Tarkin, when he demolished Alderaan, that was when the Imperial citizens really started to turn against the Imperial leadership. The Empire had destroyed one of "its own" when it destroyed Alderaan, a Core World that founded the Old Republic, so was part of the old boy's club. Were there bigger outcries when the Wookies were carted off into slavery or when Outer Rim alien worlds were routinely turned to glass from towards the end of the Clone Wars onwards? Imagine BDZs being done out of grim necessity to flatten planetoids or space habitats that were turned into giant shipyards and battle droid factories, with few or no cities, but then it gradually morphed into punishing civilian populations of the alien variety.

[Oskuro]

NO

[Darth Yan]

There probably was some prejudice, but it definately wasn't as bad as in the empire. P.S: The reason Kasshykk didn't raise any outcries was because the empire tricked people into thinking that the Wookies had agreed to work with the empire peacefully. So if they had known then the support for the empire would have been smaller. It's also been implied that some defectors defected due to disgust at the mistreatment of aliens (Soontir fel sort of did this, although it was more of realising that human supremicism was a load of crap.)

[Serafina]

Sure, some rebel alliance members may have some racist prejudices. Thats just part of human nature (not a nice or good one, but it is).
This does not mean at all that the rebel alliance alone is racist.
That we see more humans than aliens in the rebel alliance is easily explainable - there are more humans than aliens. After all, we see humans on most planets in the SW galaxy, while most alien races only settle on a single planet.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Even among aliens, there are known racist prejudices. One of the few things Ysane Isard tried to exploit with the Krytos virus was latent anti-human sentiment within the New Republic. Nevermind the inter-species rivalry and hatred that erupted during the Caamas document crises.

[Stark]

NO

I hear a group being in charge of ships they own means there cannot possibly be any racism in the rebel alliance as a whole! Even Orange is smart enough to think that many who join the alliance for xyz reason would STILL have been subjected to possibly a lifetime of anti-alien propaganda and these attitudes might creep into the organisation (or elements of it).

[Anguirus]

There was an interesting minor character in the book Iron Fist who was a Coruscant-native rebel. He hated the Empire with a passion, but never shed his anti-alien prejudices that were part of Coruscant high society culture. Well, not until his awesome sacrificial death trying to save victimized alien prisoners.

[Stark]

There was an interesting minor character in the book Iron Fist who was a Coruscant-native rebel. He hated the Empire with a passion, but never shed his anti-alien prejudices that were part of Coruscant high society culture. Well, not until his awesome sacrificial death trying to save victimized alien prisoners.

I don't know much about the EU, but given the apparent ease with which Solo and Skywalker were accepted (ie no induction, no training, no standards etc) it seems this would be pretty common if racism itself is common in the galaxy.

[Darth Fanboy]

The Seperatist leadership being dominated by alien merchants and rulers wouldn't have helped either.

Palpatine actually set it up that way so all of the assets controlled by aliens would end up in human hands at the end of the war (RoTS novelization).

[Mr Bean]

I don't know much about the EU, but given the apparent ease with which Solo and Skywalker were accepted (ie no induction, no training, no standards etc) it seems this would be pretty common if racism itself is common in the galaxy.

EU hints that humans out number all the alien races in the galaxy which are space-faring by a good bit. There may be more of Species X or Species Y, but chances are those Species limit themselves to a hand full of worlds or similar systems.

Or to say it another way, for every off-world Rodian or Bothan, there are ten humans. To note the EU says the Human species is the single most common race found through out the galaxy. And hints that they are not just the most common but common by a fact of three or four. So there might be say five quintillion (10^18) running around the Galaxy at large(Random large number). So Racism against humans is hard except among the actively repressed because humans are just so damn common.

[Havok]

Question: Has it been established that Palpatine is racist himself or does he just use racism as a tool to further his ends?

[Darth Fanboy]

Mostly as a means to an end, IIRC Palpatine prefers to discriminate based on Force Ability/lack thereof but I don't have the exact stuff from Dark Empire to quote at the moment.

[Oskuro]

I hear a group being in charge of ships they own means there cannot possibly be any racism in the rebel alliance as a whole! Even Orange is smart enough to think that many who join the alliance for xyz reason would STILL have been subjected to possibly a lifetime of anti-alien propaganda and these attitudes might creep into the organisation (or elements of it).

Well, of course there are racist sentiments, but they keep it under wraps enough to be able to function under the command of a Mon-Cal admiral, with not even a hint of racists smirks or rejection to the notion. So as an organization, I'd say the Rebels are hardly racist, even if its constituents have their own prejudices.

[Eleas]

Question: Has it been established that Palpatine is racist himself or does he just use racism as a tool to further his ends?

I have not seen any credible indicator of Palpatine discriminating on something like that. Indeed, when he banished Thrawn, ostensibly for being an embarrassment at court, he just so happened to send with him a fleet sufficient to conquer the Unknown Regions, and a mandate to do so. Not only Thrawn had Palpatine's full and implicit support; Maul (a Zabrak) and Sedriss QagaLok (a near-human) were among others in whom Palpatine apparently placed his full trust, or as close to it as he might come.

One might further consider the fact that Palpatine learned the ways of the Dark Side at the feet of darth Plagueis, a Muun, and even after his death would keep a healthy respect for his old master's power and skill. Palpatine would later work on a book titled "on the weakness of inferiors," defining "the weak" as those who did not understand or sense the Force. To my knowledge, nowhere in his private musings does the subject of "inferior species" ever arise.

More to the point, Palpatine is a power-monger and a deceiver. He uses existing foibles in order to bring others to ruin. Of course he'd use pre-existing specieist currents if they were useful to him. But to allow himself to be swept up in this carefully orchestrated fearmongering? He'd be foolish to.

[Drooling Iguana]

I find it interesting that every single on-screen Rebel pilot at the battle of Yavin and nearly all those at the battle of Endor were human, despite the fact that The Phantom Menace established that human reflexes were at the low end of the scale compared to many other species in the galaxy (hence the fact that the only human who could race pods competitively was the Jedi's chosen one.)

Granted, a lot of the military hardware at that point was most likely designed primarily to be used by clones of Jango Fett, but surely there would be a few non-humans that could fit into an X-Wing cockpit.

[Batman]

I find it interesting that every single on-screen Rebel pilot at the battle of Yavin and nearly all those at the battle of Endor were human, despite the fact that The Phantom Menace established that human reflexes were at the low end of the scale compared to many other species in the galaxy (hence the fact that the only human who could race pods competitively was the Jedi's chosen one.)
Granted, a lot of the military hardware at that point was most likely designed primarily to be used by clones of Jango Fett, but surely there would be a few non-humans that could fit into an X-Wing cockpit.

Demographics. As has already been pointed out, humans DO seem to outnumber aliens something fierce. Ships already designed to be operated by humans, plenty of humans around to put in them even in the Alliance.

[Anguirus]

Question: Has it been established that Palpatine is racist himself or does he just use racism as a tool to further his ends?

The EU seemed to make a pretty airtight case that Palpatine is racist until TPM, where we saw a much cannier, smarter Palpatine with an alien apprentice. Since then, the big sources of pro-human racism has kind of been shifted over to Coruscant's "High Human Culture" and Count Dooku (who considered the ultimate goal of the Clone Wars to be the establishment of an "Empire of Man"), with Palpatine puppet-mastering and only really caring about his own personal power at the end of the day.

The appearance of Maul pretty much ended Palpatine's portrayal as a racist in the tie-in fiction, but the establishment of Darth Plagueis to be a Muun REALLY put the bullet in that idea. (I mean yes he killed the guy, but then his first apprentice was a Zabrak, and his most trusted flunkies are all alien. Besides, with the expanded view of his character we see in the prequels it really seems like such feelings would be almost... beneath him.)

[DrMckay]

Don't forget, you also have the Humans being given preferential treatment under the Empire, (And the Corporate Sector Authority.) This gives them more flexibility to join and begin an insurrection than aliens who are watched, enslaved and controlled.

Humans organized resistance to the empire first with the Corellian Treaty (Corellia, Alderaan, and Chandrilla,) getting into the fight before many others.

[TC Pilot]

It's worth pointing out that the Alliance's Declaration of Rebellion charged the Emperor with "a policy of blatant racism and genocide against the nonhuman peoples of the Galaxy." Of course, the document is little more than propaganda, but it would seem such sentiment had enough traction amongst the disaffected to warrant its inclusion as a reason to rebel.

Of course, a group so desperate to recruit former drug-runners and untrained farmboys into immediate military service would suggest that the Rebels wouldn't be too picky, least of all when Leia, a major rebel leader, calls Chewie a "walking carpet" and Threepio calls Jawas "disgusting creatures."

Since practically every source available is from a Rebel perspective, it's not hard to imagine any xenophobia was simply glossed over or ignored, given the fundamentally racist sentiments of large swathes of the galactic population. The fall of the Empire would not just magically change the sentiments of trillions, if not quadrillions.

[Mr Bean]

It's worth pointing out that the Alliance's Declaration of Rebellion charged the Emperor with "a policy of blatant racism and genocide against the nonhuman peoples of the Galaxy." Of course, the document is little more than propaganda, but it would seem such sentiment had enough traction amongst the disaffected to warrant its inclusion as a reason to rebel.

Of course, a group so desperate to recruit former drug-runners and untrained farmboys into immediate military service would suggest that the Rebels wouldn't be too picky, least of all when Leia, a major rebel leader, calls Chewie a "walking carpet" and Threepio calls Jawas "disgusting creatures."

Threepio may call the Jawas disgusting creatures from their well know habits of dicing up robots and selling the parts off.

Robotic Intelligence and morals is a kinda hard to gauge, but assuming they were programed from a human or human like moral prospective Threepio's software may simply be interpreting what the Jawas do as similar carving up dead bodies and selling off the parts. He is a machine after all.

Who knows, it might be from a Droid prospective they are "disgusted" or assign feeling's similar to that, to any creature or species who are well know scrap merchants .

Or again it may be programed racism. Maybe Anakin thought Jawas smelled bad and programed Threepio to agree with him.

[Lord Revan]

few things to note.

it's probably benefitial for the Rebel Alliance to not appear overtly racist, so any rebel sources about the subject are questionble at best.

second we can assume that the rebel alliance wanted to avoid similarities with the CIS as much as possible.

last it's not unlikely that the empire monitored and/or enslaved non-human species making recruitment among them harder, also we should also remember that it was probably easier to find humans with military training and experience then non-humans with the same (granted Luke had no military training but I assume rebels needed every pilot NOW! and really didn't care at that point (and should noted that while Luke had no combat experience he was already a decent civilian Pilot) and lets not forget that Han was a former imperial officer (junior officer yeah but still had some military trainin).

[Darth Yan]

Han was at the top of his class. He beat Soontir Fel, who is established as being pretty damn good, so yeah, recruiting Han would have been a smart move.

[Lex]

There was an interesting minor character in the book Iron Fist who was a Coruscant-native rebel. He hated the Empire with a passion, but never shed his anti-alien prejudices that were part of Coruscant high society culture. Well, not until his awesome sacrificial death trying to save victimized alien prisoners.

I don't know much about the EU, but given the apparent ease with which Solo and Skywalker were accepted (ie no induction, no training, no standards etc) it seems this would be pretty common if racism itself is common in the galaxy.

He's right on that one though. The guy was a slicer of something and had a quarrel with Wedge because he didn't want to sleep in the same room as an alien member of wraith squadron.

[Shroom Man 777]

Who's to say that the Tattooine pod races really proved human reflexive inferiority compared to aliens? Tattooine seems to be an outlier in that A.) it's a shithole planet and B.) there seem to be more aliens there than humans, at least by doing a demographic survey of local hives of scum and villainy. And C.) I don't think any of the pod racer drivers were of the equivalent size of an adult human, the pod racer "cockpits" themselves seemed mighty small and aside from being the Chosen One, maybe Anakin was able to compete in the Pod Race by being small enough to fit in a pod racer and by being light enough to not weigh it down too much?

Also, Tattooine is a shithole - there could be anti-human racism in places like it, if anti-alien racism was prominent in places like Coruscant or Imperial High Society. Humans having "too slow reflexes" to Pod Race could be just like Asians being "too near-sighted" and short or something.

[Eleas]

He's right on that one though. The guy was a slicer of something and had a quarrel with Wedge because he didn't want to sleep in the same room as an alien member of wraith squadron.

Castin Donn. In the book, Allston also made mention of Castin being part of Coruscant-based alliance forces, and that said dissidents largely subscribed to the whole High Human Culture bias.