Racial and Extra-Terrestrial Perceptions

Query: What are your perceptions of race within your own species? What are your perceptions of species other than your own?

Addendum: If you are a member of a particular species, is race important? Why or why not?

This has been a query provided by Revenant Corporation. Information gathered is to be used for non-profit purposes purely related to sociographic studies. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Question 1: Najhil is Raloi, and Najhil knows that so-called 'Races' exist within the Species, but Najhil knows neither the Races nor associated Stereotypes. Najhil only ever encountered Najhil's own Race back on Turvess, and Najhil has only seen a Couple of Raloi over the past three Years; not exactly enough Information to form a Conclusion.

Question 2: Najhil does not really have any major Opinions on other Species (other than that Turians and Quarians tend to be rather attractive :P); Najhil tries to judge People on an individual Basis rather than as a Whole.

Question 3: Najhil does not consider Race or Species to be important.

The above response is an appropriate example of the data that is desired for collection.

Please continue as such.

Query: I'm drell, and while I can make a sort-of-guess as to where someone's ancestors came from before the exodus, I think the most important divisions in the drell are religion and compact status.

I can identify some of the major racial groupings in other species in sort of a guidebook, how-to-not-offend the X kind of way, but they don't mean much to me.

Addendum: Species is important. Yeah, it's important that I'm drell and that another person is Asari and will live 1000 years and that other guy is Salarian and is enmeshed in a clan structure. For drell, I don't think race is. I think it might be for humans, since they're still a bit touchy about it. What-your-father-is-status is important to Asari, again, because they're touchy about it.

1: Human and I think race is irrelevant. I've served with people of all races, and kind of have to get over the judging on stereotypes, I think. Afterall, the stereotype of my people is this:



Which needless to say, I'm not.

2: i think that there's a lot of stereotypes about other species, which are sometimes hard not to buy into. I don't think it's suitable to judge, say the asari, by our own cultural norms, because they aren't human. In regards to other species, i think there's lot to admire and a lot to be confused by, things I'll probably never get. I am trying to get over the batarian thing. Though some members of that species make it a little hard to. (You know who you are!)

3: I don't think race is particularly important, I'd like to think we've moved past it. As for species...I think it does count, because your culture has a lot to do with the way you think and the way you interact with the galaxy. But acknowledging species as part of you is very different to supremist views.

Turian, and I don't think "race", as defined as "physical characteristics inherit to a certain group" (for example, turians born on North Solregit tend towards shorter stature, longer fringes on the women, and have a higher proportion of hide and eye colours found far less frequently in the turian population as a whole) matters as much as "culture". And culture, to a large extent, depends on what paint you've got on your face. I'm certain that if a turian born on North Solregit with the physical characteristics of same walked into an establishment wearing Pulanese facepaint, they'd be treated as Pulanese.

And culture as marked by facepaint is the difference, because you'll get treated a lot differently as Pulanese then you will as Thracian, which in turn will be different if you're Invictan. Hell, North and South Solregit have different facepaint now because the Southerners don't want to be treated as Northerners and vice versa. And we all know what happens if you're a bareface.

Do I think facepaint is a judge of your worth as a living being? No. But "race/culture" does matter, because again, the fact is that if you're wearing a certain facepaint, and so is someone else, you've got something in common--not just a background, a national costume, a set of songs and a recipe book, but a certain experience. The experience of being treated the way you are because of the paint you wear. When people look at your paint and make a presumption about you: your beliefs, your attitudes, your traits, your abilities, your behaviour.

I've gotten to know a lot of aliens, who are lovely people and dear friends. I recall at first I tended to treat most aliens as barefaces, with a certain unease as to why they were "hiding their beliefs from me." I felt that they must be either confused, lacking confidence, or deliberately deceptive not to paint what they stood for on their faces. Now, of course, that notion sounds ridiculous, but at the time I felt uncomfortable without the proclamation that is turian facepaint.

Does species matter? Again, culture--shared experience. I can't commiserate with an asari what it is to outlive most of her friends and family, and I know that little Lucia is likely going to be a young woman when all the rest of us are dust. She's going to need other asari to talk to about that, because none of us turians can really understand. And if any of my people think they can't stop reliving their wars, I can't even begin to comprehend what it must be to be a combat veteran and drell.

No, species doesn't matter to your potential as a friend or your worth as a being. But your experience is going to be different if you're a salarian than it is if you're a krogan--that's just a fact. And yes, I think that experience is "important." It's foolish to pretend it doesn't exist, just as it's foolish to see people as generalized stereotypes rather than as individiuals.

I couldn't even say if we really have races as such among turians. Of course there are differences in physiology because of natural selection, on what continent of Palaven your ancestors happened to live on etc. But they are all mixed up now, at least on Palaven because of the ease of travel from a place to another. So I'd say race isn't important. At all. Spirits, it was easy to travel...

Species on the other hand, is a completely different thing. There isn't just the fundementally different biological and psychological background (which are linked to one another, of course) but a cmpletely different history, culture, habbits, behavior... Then again, you shouldn't make assumptions on someone just because they are of some species species. A turian and a human can have a lot more in common than two turians, but this isn't true on average. You shouldn't try to stereotype every single member of a species. Even if they are similar to some degree inside the sepcies, the variance within is huge. I guess this is true for all species. Something in common, yet at the same time huge differences.

In the end, we're all sentient beings, and that's the lowest common nominator. Then again, we'll always have something in common between all of us.

For Quarians, race was made irrelevant and more importantly, mostly invisible. Anyone who gets to see my features has already formed a very close relationship with me. Our culture had very few distinctions as long as we lived on the Flotilla, even between the fleets. I was born in the patrol fleet but transferred after pilgrimage, there was constant movement. Now that there are Rannochians and Fleet Diehards, Isolationists and Consensus-seekers, and we have to learn how to manage that again.

I know almost nothing about other species. When I was on pilgrimage, they all treated me badly, and I haven't had enough time to form opinions now that things are better.

As to question one, I don't think race matters worth a damn. There are still the racial and national stereotypes, and I think it wil be awhile yet before they go away. We Irish are still stereotyped as alcoholics (yeah we know how to party, doesn't mean we're addicted). I know that I was shocked at Basic when I found out the girl in the bunk next to me was from the central UNAS. After all she was so polite. Having served with people from all over Earth and the colonies I think I can safely say that stereotypes are horse shit. You just have to get to know people individually, regardless of where they're from. As to whether race is important? In my personal opinion not in the slightest.

Question two; other species. Most other species I like to think I can form a relatively unbiased opinion on... which probably isn't the case. I'm afraid I'm not as liberal as some would like. I don't know that I'm ever not going to be a little suspicious of a quarian until I find out whether they're from Rannoch or not. Because if not who knows what the hell they've done? And again you can call me racist but I don't know that I'll ever be able to be friends with a batarian. Maybe we can come to mutual respect. Maybe. But after seeing what they did to colonists in the Verge I will have a hard time seeing them for anything but slavers who prey on the helpless. Perhaps I'm wrong to think that way. I probably am. But that's the extent of my experience with batarians. And of course you all know what I think of yahg. Bloody fecking sociopaths. Ought to nuke 'em all. Anyway, yeah I think species is important. As several people above me opined, if only for the shared experiences that those of other species cannot duplicate.

Hanar are not all that biologically divergent. Our skin can range from pink to purple to blue, but that was never seen as a major difference. Far more important to a hanar is what they believe. That is the basis for culture.

Living on the Citadel forces one to have a cosmopolitan view of other species. They are people, just like this one. However, that is not the view it was told to have as a child. Aliens were very much the other. Of course, with drell in this one's class, and being colonial, we were not taught in exactly the same way as, say, Abyssalist (or, on the other extreme, Hedonist) children.

It has been told that race, or colony markings, or fatherhood, or clan, or ship or whatever divisions a species makes for itself are important, but it is a subjective importance. There is very little difference, in this one's mind, whether one is from Thracia or Macedyn. But there is a difference between the two such turians, as mentioned above.

Inter-species racism has really dropped off since we discovered there are other races out there different than us. You occasionally see extremely small fringe groups on Earth or other colonies like the White Sword, but they're so laughably ignored and have such small range of followers that they might as well not exist. I had a problem with Turians and to a lesser extent, any race that wasn't humanity. I saw Turians as a military rival of Humanity that needed to be subverted at any chance. I was raised by survivors of Shanxi, trained by Cerberus. Humanity HAD to survive. Humanity HAD to strive forward where her rivals stumbled and fell.

Ten years of service with that organization and I have nothing to show for it but regret and armor I will never wear again. Viros Fenon saved my life, and I owe him enough to put my prejudices behind me. I wish I could have quit earlier, quit before the Reapers had gotten involved, but even then I'd have had someone gunning for me eventually. Now that everyone is mostly dead, and a scattered batch of survivors are left, I hope that I can live out the rest of my days in relative peace.

There are some days I wish I'd died, with the shame I remember for killing and doing the deeds of that fucking organization keeping me in bed and nigh-catatonic, but someone loves me, and I need to be strong enough for her. She's lost just as much as I have and that's almost entirely my fault.

As Capice pointed out earlier, 'race' is kind of a muddy term for drell. Granted, from a purely genetic standpoint 'race' is mostly a nonsense term.

Other SPECIES... Well, I really don't mind a lot of them. Hanar and other drell I find more familiar, being Kahjian. As for asari, well, I happen to be dating one so you have that.

You see a lot of humans and volus here on Illium, as well as some turians, a surprising number of krogan, a lot of salarians...

Honestly? I think getting a job on Illium has done WONDERS for my perception of other species. And it helped me realize an important fact, that when you get down to it, outside of chemical concerns (Food and whatnot) species isn't especially important.