Nu Vibez and Roleplay Guide Magazine - December 2015 | Page 51

black man wearing a stormtrooper’s uniform”.
He goes on to say:
The man, who is played by John
Boyega (of Attack the Block), pops
into view perspiring and panting
hard. He is surrounded by desert:
in all likelihood the rolling dunes of
Tatooine, the homeworld of both
Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.
And he appears to be in trouble.
Maybe the only people more
alarmed than Boyega by his circumstances were commenters
surprised by the sight of a black
man’s head emerging from the
white plate armor of an Imperial
stormtrooper. People on Reddit
compared the trailer to a scene
from the 1987 Mel Brooks spoof
Space Balls, a gag that plays up a
black stormtrooper as jive-talkin’.
In other threads and on Twitter,
some people registered mere racist shock. But a few corners of the
Internet turned to the internal logic of the Star Wars universe to appeal the presence of a black stormtrooper. Didn’t the prequels reveal
that all stormtroopers were white
clones?
When Boyega’s character, Finn,
popped off that helmet, I, like
some others, was surprised. Instead of being upset about it
however or feeling like it was
“that damned affirmative action
program has even managed
to reach outer space, I was intrigued. I thought ahh they want
us to react and say how will they
address the clone issue with all
the original stormtroopers. It, I
believe, was actually to stimulate
our thinking, not to expose the
racism that’s still with us even to-

day, after all the sacrifices and
victories that have made things
better than they use to be for
people of all colors.
I don’t want to bore you with
my theories on how or if they
are going to cover this issue of
Finn being a black trooper. Yet
it would be remiss to not point
out that fact that the bounty hunter used as the cloning
template in the prequels was
not white. Writer Kriston Capps
sums this point up well below:
“Those clones weren’t white in
any sense of the word. Jango Fett,
the bounty hunter who served as
the genetic template, was culturally (and perhaps ethnically) a
Mandalorian. And the actor who
portrays him, Temuera Derek

Morrison, is a New Zealand-born
person of brown skin and partial
Maori descent”.
So my fellow Force fans and
movie goers there you have it.
Once again Star Wars has created dialogue and reminded us
that you don’t have to go to a
galaxy far far away to experience the dark side. I think once
the movie’s out and the issue
can be discussed without ruining a plot line, we all will have
something we need to talk
about. Oh … and may the force
be with us all.

NU VIBEZ & ROLEPLAY GUIDE MAGAZINE 51