Why MLK Told Nichelle Nichols ‘You cannot’ Leave Star Trek

One of the things about modern Leftists that just ticks me off to no end is their insistence on finding, and especially creating, racism where there isn’t any.

Racism was a real issue where and when it existed. I grew up during the end of the era when there was real racism in the United States. But I didn’t grow up where there was any real racism. Because of that, I didn’t grow up with any ingrained historical prejudices against any other race and in a very real way that makes me an objective historical observer of the de-racialization of America.

Where I grew up, there were no black people at all. None. The only black people I saw during my early years were on television. This was during the era when television was broadcast as a radio signal and living in a rural area we were only able to receive two of the three major U.S. television networks so even my television based experience was limited.

My experiential young life was not contaminated by any negative views on any other race either positive or negative. Because of the religious beliefs of our family people were just people, all God’s Children.

When my sister and I were old enough my family participated in a program sponsored by our church that offered young, black inner city kids a two week stay in the rural area where I lived at that time. Mom signed us up for that program and that summer we had a guest who was a young black kid from an inner city environment.

His name was “Jimmy” and we had a blast playing with him for two weeks. He was amazed at how we lived, at the farm animals, at the quiet of the rural American countryside and all the things that were different from where he lived.

During that two weeks I do not recall ever thinking of him as anything but another kid to play with. The main difference between us that impressed me most was not his skin color but his home environment as he described it to us. I remember thinking “I’m so glad I don’t live where he does.” He slept in my room and as I recall he was a perfect guest. Polite, friendly, outgoing, he never snooped in anything and he certainly never stole anything. We were economic peers, his family was as poor as mine and the principle difference there was being as we lived on a farm we had much a much better food supply than he did at his home.

I know this latter fact because after he’d gone I asked my mom why Jimmy’s knees and elbows were so “knobby”. She explained what the condition known as ricketts was to me.

So not only was I not predisposed to any sort of racial bias, my very first experience with someone of another race than my Nordic heritage was a very positive one.

Fast forward to my enlistment in the Marine Corps. That was my next experience with black people. I expected them all to be like Jimmy, boy was I wrong. When I was in the Marines there were serious issues with racism. There was terrible friction between the races at that time. Camp Pendleton was locked down for two weeks for fear of race riots. If you think the BLM riots were bad imagine what Marines fighting Marines divided across racial lines would be like.

People were going to the brig all the time. The slightest excuse for a fight between a white guy and a black guy would flare up and everyone involved would be sent to the brig where they were all treated harshly. The Marine Corps was doing its best to contain and mitigate the problem but there was no doubt we had a serious problem back then.

What I learned from all of this and subsequent life experience is that the difference which causes problems isn’t a matter of race, it’s a matter of culture. Some, not all by a long shot but some of the black people I knew in the Marines were from a culture so alien to mine that they might as well be from another planet.

I have to emphasize that word “some” because one of the people I have most respected in my entire life was a black Marine Gunnery Sergeant named William (Billy) Tribble. It’s a hard name to forget even if I didn’t have good reason to remember it because I grew up as a serious Trekkie and there’s a Star Trek episode about little fur balls called “tribbles”. Later on in my Marine Corps life one of my best friends was a black guy from St. Louis named Donny Whitley. So yeah, some but by no means all …

I want everyone to know too that it wasn’t just the black Marines that were causing problems. There were white Marines who reacted to the unrest of black Marines by adopting a more-or-less pseudo-Nazi culture. There were swastikas and Nazi flags hanging in barracks room housing of some of the white guys. Those were taken down and hidden during barracks inspections and confiscated if they were found. This did the opposite of help the situation and that culture too is as alien to me as if from another planet. I despise Nazis and anything that smacks of Nazism.

This is why I’ll mock and deride you if you sound like a Nazi to me and there are absolutely people on the Right who sound like Nazis to my perception. There is always the very real danger of going too far on the Right, it’s as real a danger as going too far on the Left. I know this for a fact, I have seen it happen.

I’m telling you all of this so you’ll understand that I have experience with real racism, racism that posed a personal and immediate threat to my life and limb. I take this topic very, very seriously.

I have prejudices learned from and taught to me by life experience. My prejudices are cultural and justified by that experience. I have no racial bigotry at all but I certainly do have a cultural bias. I’ll give a person from my culture a chance to prove he’s an asshole and someone from another culture a chance to prove he’s not. I don’t care if people agree with me on this because this is what I have learned over a lifetime of experience and observation.

I’m white of Nordic ancestry. I’m as proud of what I am and who I am as anyone else of any other culture. I understand their pride in these things because I feel it too. I approve of that pride if it’s not destructive and anti-social. I do not approve of someone who takes it to extremes in any culture, we all have to live on this planet and I’ve spent a lifetime being a peacemaker. That doesn’t mean a lifetime of meekness and temerity, sometimes peacemakers have to stand against the un-peaceful with lethal force. You don’t want to be one of those people that men like me need to stand against and if you take things too far you are not on “my side” no matter what your politics are.