Star Trek, siblings and diversity

I am a Star Trek fan.  Not a huge fan, I couldn’t answer the trivia questions most Trekkies can, but I always enjoyed the original series.

So I was interested to read that William Shatner just had his 80^th birthday.  He is still working on television, is writing a book and keeps active.  Well done!  I hope I will be as active when I’m 80.

When I saw this article, with an interview with the actor, I just had to send a link to my brother, thinking he would be interested too.

Turns out my brother isn’t as big a fan as I am.

We exchanged a few emails in which he declared the characters in Star Trek as two dimensional with little or no room for personal expression, and I extolled its modernity in portraying a diverse crew with visible minorities, women and even aliens.  This was, after all, made more than 40 years ago. I mentioned that here we are in the 21^st century, and still struggling to create diversified and equal workplaces.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I ended my last email to him with the line: For its day, Star Trek went where no man had gone before.

Overdid it, didn't I?

 My patient and supportive sibling answered me by suggesting that maybe I should do a post on my blog “about this whole thing of a black woman radiocontroller and analyze this whole equality in the workplace thingy".

I decided to take him up on it, and this post is inspired by my brother.

I have to thank him.

I will be posting more on workplace diversity, after all this is a subject that directly affects me.