This is my first post here, and then i'm not particurarly fond of Ash, but I never considered her a racist. Sorry if this offends anyone, but i see Ash as a estereotipical USA nacionalist, or USA soldier, the type you imagine thinks USA is the best and the rest of countries are better or worse depending on their compliance with american politics and/or views. It´s like somebody insulting the french, or the canadians, or any random people of another country, simply because they are of another country and culture. It´s not racism. I´m from Spain, and here in Europe the spanish people have fame of having much fun, great parties, etc... and/or being bad workers, lazy, or something like that. It´s a theme of culture and in some cases geography. Here we have a lot of sun compared to other european countries, and it´s true that that influences the mood very much. Or we have siestas, that are part of our culture and make some people think we are lazy because we stop to sleep in the middle of the day. Different work horaries, different religius traditions, etc... all of that can make it difficult to truly understand other countries cultures without making somebody change. The ME interstelar politcs could compare to the ONU, and the views of other races in humans would be like if an Amazon tribe suddenly gained power in the first world. The vast mayority of people would not understand them, their traditions, or anything, and would view them as an oddity, a curiosity.
And that is when the diferences are only cultural, humans are all pretty much the same everywhere. Our biology plays an important part of how we are, how our brains works, what hormones are used in what cases, etc... all of that is the same. That´s why racism is so bad, because apart of culture, all the races are the same. With aliens is not so easy. It´s true that in personality is like with humans, there are good and bad people, but with aliens it goes beyond that. The asari only have one gender, that righ there is a mayor cultural sift, and one motive why we can´t expect them to understand everything about us. They have no point of reference for things like sexism, discrimination for gender, etc. The krogans are biology speaking killing machings, their very bodys make them more agressive than us, so is natural for other species to be very cautius with them. Look what happened with the rachni, nobody could speak with them, nobody learned that they were not themselves, and assumed that they were like that naturally. You can´t really understand a species that lives for millenia. The most the galactic races can do is understand that they can never understand the rest of races totally, and go for compromises and acceptance of their differences. So you can´t compare racism with specism in this case. Racism is intolerance of somebody that is like you except for the color. In ME, the other races aren´t like you at all, or are in some things but not all, so it´s normal to have misunderstandings.
The comments of the quarian in the flotilla about humans speaking so well isn´t racist. What does a quarian that maybe hasn´t seen a human in his live knows about us? For all he knew, we were mutes. He doesn´t have a frame of reference.
Ash is not racist, she´s like an american marine worried because a russian ex-KGB and a member of a guerrilla gang in south america are given free reign of the most advanced ship they have, so you understand her concerns more. Yes, it´s because they aren´t americans/humans, but not because she´s prejuicied, but because she doesn´t trust their countries. During the game she doesn´t "see the error of her ways", it´s more that she meets the people, and not the race. She`s probably still the same with the rest of the species as a whole. And Virmire doesn´t contradict that. In a combat situation, the rest of the people are soldiers too, and everybody has their part to play.
I don´t know if I have explained right, and then my english is badly written, but that´s what i think. And I don´t like Ash because I hate that type of patriotism, my country/planet/species firts, the rest second. I like spanish culture, but apart of that, i consider myself more european than spanish, politicaly speaking in global terms, and that if i have to chose, at all
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