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Every so often, there's a lot of meta among fans about racism in science fiction. Anyone interested in the topic (or any science fiction fan who is interested in racism in general) should watch the special features on the Babylon 5: Lost Tales DVD. There's a very interesting talk with J. Michael Straczynski, the showrunner, in which he mentions a curious thing he noticed during filming of the series.
Babylon 5 needed a lot of aliens walking around in the background. Most of them belonged to three "species" of aliens: Narn, Centauri, and Minbari. All three species looked very different. Straczynski noticed that whenever there was a break in filming, the extras playing those background aliens self-segregated into distinct groups. Now, the extras did play the same species each week, so they spent long enough in their group to make friendships within the group. However, which group you had been placed in originally was purely random--there were no differences between the groups besides what prosthetic and costume they happened to be wearing. So there were no inherent prejudices or stereotypes at work in this self-segregation. Straczynski thought it was an interesting social pheomena, and so one day he told the director of extras that from now on he wanted a particular "Narn" to be a "Centauri." (It may or may not be relevant that on the show, Narns and Centauri are enemies and often at each others' throats.)
The first day, the Narn-turned-Centauri sat with his old friends in the Narn group during breaks in filming. But he wasn't included in the group as he had been before. The second day, he stayed with his fellow Centauri.
Babylon 5 needed a lot of aliens walking around in the background. Most of them belonged to three "species" of aliens: Narn, Centauri, and Minbari. All three species looked very different. Straczynski noticed that whenever there was a break in filming, the extras playing those background aliens self-segregated into distinct groups. Now, the extras did play the same species each week, so they spent long enough in their group to make friendships within the group. However, which group you had been placed in originally was purely random--there were no differences between the groups besides what prosthetic and costume they happened to be wearing. So there were no inherent prejudices or stereotypes at work in this self-segregation. Straczynski thought it was an interesting social pheomena, and so one day he told the director of extras that from now on he wanted a particular "Narn" to be a "Centauri." (It may or may not be relevant that on the show, Narns and Centauri are enemies and often at each others' throats.)
The first day, the Narn-turned-Centauri sat with his old friends in the Narn group during breaks in filming. But he wasn't included in the group as he had been before. The second day, he stayed with his fellow Centauri.
