Sorry, it's been a while since the ship broke a system boundary, so no data loads for some while.
So, Progress has been slow, but it is there. Sharren is still alive, and she is about to meet some new folks. One of the tones i have had to deal with recently is racism. Tough subject, and one only approached from a side ways angle in the book. Still, i thought i would put down a little about what is happening in the story world in terms of racism, and how it is expressed.
First off, I need to note that bigotry and prejudice are actually more important terms, as they are the real factors at work here. Earth it self is a pretty nice place to live and work, and "race" as we know it is not a major concern in most humans daily lives. With travel being fast and cheap, the work force being highly mobile, and industry being largely off-planet, people of all colors and origins interact frequently, and end up working on the same space side facilities.
Also, the wars of the story's past were costly, and left Africa and South America in very strong political/social positions at the beginning of the new age. Religion is not in fashion, so many former cultural problems have migrated to a new form of elitism, and good old fashioned classism.
This closeness, and the reduction of language and religious barriers has largely eliminated color based bigotry.
Classism is quite simple. Earth folk tend to view new colonies much like 18th century Britain viewed Australia, as a penal colony. They look at deportees with a mix of pity and distaste, and are likely to lump such folks all together into one heap, the heap of poor criminals. Earthers also tend to assume that folks from any other planet are poor, at best. One of the more commonly held negative beliefs in this setting is that the chaff falls to the bottom, and it's a good thing we can use them on the colonies, because they have no place here. Levels of classist behavior of course vary from one individual to the next.
Elitism is a different, but related problem. the most common forms are the earth first attitude held by many earthers. This is a simple belief that earth is just better, and that any one, from nay where must recognized this fact.
The most culturally shared bigotry, however, is anti-posthumanism. There are a large number of people, especially on the more religious colonies, who hate post humans. they argue that giving up, or deeply modifying your body is some kind of unforgivable sin. This applies equally to Chimeras, bio-moded people, and cyborgs. Thus, most biggies, greyhounds, goblins have had some kind of negative or strongly negative experience growing up.
the Character Keeva in Avi's stories is a good example, as her father was run out of office and black balled because of marrying her mother, a Greyhound class chimera. The simple act of marring a fully human looking person, but one that was a gene-mod from a war that happened before h was born, ruined a man's life.
One would hope that bigotry might have ended, but like all things, it merely changed.
