{"id":40205,"date":"2015-03-02T02:04:55","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T02:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=40205"},"modified":"2017-04-24T01:35:01","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T01:35:01","slug":"mr-spock-mixed-race-pioneer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=40205","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Spock, Mixed-Race Pioneer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mr. Spock, Mixed-Race Pioneer<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity<\/a>
\nNational Public Radio<\/a>
\n2015-03-01<\/p>\n

Steve Haruch<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

At a time when the mere sight of Petula Clark<\/a> touching Harry Belafonte’s<\/a> arm held the potential to upset delicate sensibilities, the half-human, half-Vulcan character Mr. Spock<\/a> embodied an identity rarely acknowledged, much less seen, on television: a mixed-race person.<\/p>\n

Sure, the mixing of races was allegorical in Spock’s case, as was the brilliantly subversive mode for social commentary on Star Trek. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t resonate.<\/p>\n

In 1968 \u2014 the year Clark made contact with Belafonte, and the same year the Star Trek<\/em><\/a> episode “Plato’s Stepchildren<\/a>” caused much consternation for network executives who feared backlash against the interracial kiss between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura \u2014 a young girl wrote a letter to Spock<\/a>, care of FaVE<\/em> magazine. In the letter, she makes the connection between Spock’s fictional identity and her own very real situation:<\/p>\n

“I know that you are half Vulcan and half human and you have suffered because of this. My mother is Negro and my father is white and I am told this makes me a half-breed. In some ways I am persecuted even more than the Negro. The Negroes don’t like me because I don’t look like them. The white kids don’t like me because I don’t exactly look like one of them either.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Leonard Nimoy<\/a>, who played Spock, wrote a long and thoughtful response that reads, in part:<\/p>\n

“Spock learned he could save himself from letting prejudice get him down. He could do this by really understanding himself and knowing his own value as a person. He found he was equal to anyone who might try to put him down \u2014 equal in his own unique way.<\/p>\n

You can do this too, if you realize the difference between popularity and true greatness.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Spock certainly knew what “true greatness” was all about. You didn’t have to be mixed-race to feel this kind of connection to Spock, though…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a time when the mere sight of Petula Clark touching Harry Belafonte’s arm held the potential to upset delicate sensibilities, the half-human, half-Vulcan character Mr. Spock embodied an identity rarely acknowledged, much less seen, on television: a mixed-race person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,125,8,20],"tags":[14788,14066,19471,2309,2833,17161,4464,17864],"class_list":["post-40205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-code-switch","tag-leonard-nimoy","tag-mr-spock","tag-national-public-radio","tag-npr","tag-spock","tag-star-trek","tag-steve-haruch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53655,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40205\/revisions\/53655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}