First, one cannot say “there is no racism here because these are species, not races.” That is just wordplay, as the word ‘race’ can also identify a whole species, like “the human race.” Also, science-fiction has always used alien species as placeholders for human races. Most importantly, intra-human and inter-species discriminations work similarly: the unjustifiable differential treatment of outsiders. The reasons why racism is wrong are also the reasons why sexism/ableism/classism/etc. are wrong—including discrimination among alien species. So I’ll use “speciesism” interchangeably with racism. This term was popularized by Australian philosopher Peter Singer to refer to human discrimination against non-human animals, so it works in this context, too... and yes, I can “tell the aliens from the animals!”
Systemic Racism
First, there is almost no systemic racism in Mass Effect. Systemic racism is the institutional, organized, deliberate oppression of some races at the hand of others. The ME galaxy would be fertile ground for this sort of thing: say, instead of rescuing the Drell, the Hanar could have kidnapped them from Rakhana and enslaved them, then felt bad about it, and now they would coexist uneasily on Kahje. This would have made the Drell-Hanar story an interesting analogy with modern-day U.S., but the writers just chose not to go there, and that’s fine.
The closest we see to systemic racism is the Salarian repression of the Krogan via genetic engineering, which may hint to various government-sponsored ethnic sterilization programs in the U.S., Japan, and Germany. But most of that plot actually centers on biological warfare, war crime ethics, and research ethics, so the race component is relatively under-analyzed. While some Salarians do think of the Krogan as animals, that definitely does not include Mordin, who’s the moral core of the genophage story on the Salarian side.
There are surely multiple cases of systemic oppression more generally, like the Protheans’ iron-fist colonialism or Illium’s corporate dystopia that fails to protect the poor, but these are not portrayed as racially motivated.
Cultural Racism
What the saga does have in droves is cultural racism: behaviors and attitudes toward other species that are coded accepted or even encouraged. While the main tool of systemic racism is the law, cultural racism uses civil society, education, religion, family, and the media. It may vary greatly in scope and harm, ranging from “white people can’t eat spicy foods” (harmless) to “Black men will rape your white daughters” (a common excuse for lynching).
Most species in ME display hostility toward other species, which is to be expected in such a diverse galaxy. But context matters. Any member of any race can be occasionally/individually racist toward any member of another race, but it takes time and tradition for those individual instances to become patterns of cultural racism; and of course only culturally dominant races can enact systemic racism, which requires established power structures. So some racial issues we see in ME are minor or isolated, based on stereotypes, anecdotal evidence, insensitivity, or emotional immaturity, and they do not amount to cultural racism. Examples: when someone wonders “what Quarians look like under the suit,” or says that “all humans look alike to me,” or when Garrus and Joker exchange racially charged jokes (but this one is more complex; see below).
The games are insufficiently nuanced to describe racial differences within the same species. We must assume for the sake of argument that each species forms a more or less unified front with regard to other species, a regrettable drawback of the species-as-races switcheroo. One notable but isolated exception is the asari ostracism toward purebloods.
In some cases, racial cultural attitudes are justified and not discriminatory. The Krogan have every reason to hate the Salarians, since the oppressed have no duty to be neutral or fair to their oppressors.
(Anti-)Human Resentment
Anti-human resentment runs a mile wide and a mile deep. The Turians, still bitter from the First Contact War and endowed with a rich military tradition, see humans as toddlers with guns. Other species are nominally friendlier but just as hostile. Everybody treats humans like the pre-Federation Vulcans do in Star Trek. Ironically, that is also how humans usually treat other species in science-fiction, and of course how Western colonial powers have infantilized the Global South for centuries to facilitate their genocide, so it’s nice to see the tables turned. Executor Pallin, a minor Turian NPC on the Citadel, puts it best: “humans grow too fast,” a likely nod to Sir William Petty’s infamous “the French grow too fast” that has influenced centuries of English foreign policy. Humans are at worst dangerous, at best space-weeds.
On the other side is a human exceptionalism bordering on ethno-nationalism. We’re a sulky bunch: we hardly need a reason, let alone a good one, to justify our exclusionary jingoism. In just the first two hours of play, Pressly, Williams, Jenkins, Udina, Anderson, even Shepard have overtly racist lines, culminating in Ashley’s much-publicized “I can’t tell the aliens from the animals” on the Citadel. Joker even fetishizes the asari, according to Liara, an equivalent to the real world’s Orientalist-pedophiliac fascination with Asian young girls. Given all of this, one almost sympathizes with the anti-human Turian politician Talid from ME2...
But aren’t the humans also entitled to resentment, since everyone hates them? Not quite.
For one, notice that human resentment is purely reactionary and comes from a place of unearned privilege, not as a defense against oppression. Calling someone out on their privilege is not oppressive, and resentment over being called out is no reason for sympathy. Nor you can say that humans aren’t unduly privileged: the whole running motif of ME1 is that humans have been given a free pass after the First Contact War and now they must prove that they earned it, which they do when Shepard saves the galaxy. More importantly, it is one thing to be wary of a political problem, but quite another to use it an excuse to endorse every racial stereotype in the book. I think that’s what rubs me wrong about Ashley and Pressly, as I explain below: not so much that they have no reason to distrust aliens (they do), but that their distrust becomes an excuse to rationalize other and entirely unfounded stereotypes.
So the trite question “is Ashley a racist?” is kind of besides the point. Yes, she is, and she’s a garden-variety, unsophisticated, everyday cultural racist, who hates the KKK (Cerberus, Terra Firma) but believes that “they” (Turians?) are out to get “us” (humans), a persecution complex common to militaristic/nationalistic types. While her concern for military security aboard the Normandy is justified on its face, justified beliefs are often used to mask unjustified ones: English philosopher Miranda Fricker calls this prejudicially motivated testimonial injustice. Ashley is a very well-written character, a realistic person who takes a few controversial facts wildly out of context, grants them a far higher status in her belief structure than she should, and rolls it all up in a narrative of granddaddy issues. Sure, she has reasons, but all racists do: bad reasons! So it’s okay to say Ashley’s behaviors are consistent with her personality and backstory, but it’s not okay to say that this consistency makes her non-racist. To say the latter is to invalidate all the work that went into making her a fantastic character.
Another reason why Ashley should not be the sole focus of this conversation is that many other characters’ racial and cultural attitudes are worth exploring. Take XO Charles Pressly, for example (he has the deck, by the way). His first comments to Shepard, early in ME1, are not especially troubling. Unlike Ashley, his reason for distrusting non-humans is not security, but pride: he believes that humans have always handled their problems independently and should continue to do so. A bullshit reason, for sure, but not horrible per se, and Shepard puts him in his place. Then we read his journal entries (ME2, “Normandy Crash Site” DLC) and we see how those comments were a façade for much uglier feelings, as is typical with someone who insists they’re not racist: “all these damned aliens aboard the Alliance’s most advanced ship. I just don’t trust them. Esp[...] that damned asari. And a quarian! What does Shepard think this is, a zoo?” So he does share Ashley’s security concerns and views. Then, by the last entry, his tune changes: “I came on this ship firmly believing humanity was on its own in the galaxy, [...] Shepard brought all these aliens on board, and there’s no way we could have accomplished what we did without them. I am proud to say [...] die for any member of this crew, regardless of what world they were born on.” That’s nice, I guess. So Pressly’s narrative is actually one of a former racist’s redemption. Of course, racists who change their mind deserve no coddling and should be met with a nod of acknowledgment, if that, so it’s perfect that this story is relegated to a tiny entry in an irrelevant side quest.
Lazy Racisms, Racy Lazisms
The saga contains plenty of examples of occasional racism unconnected to discriminatory systems. For one, consider the racially charged jokes between Garrus and Joker in ME3. These don’t indicate a broader pattern, since neither character is openly bigoted toward the other’s race in other contexts. Yes, Joker is sexist and only grows up thanks to EDI, the trite stereotype of a woman having to invest emotional labor to wean an immature man, but that is a problem for another post. These racial jokes would be less okay between Garrus and, say, Pressly, given Pressly’s track record.
Moreover, these are exchanges between people on equal moral footing who are able to consent to the exchange, so neither is victimized. Contrast this with people belonging to racial minorities in racially oppressive societies, who sometimes feel forced to make light of racism in order to be accepted by the racial majority who hates it when they “play the race card.” Their relational autonomy in those cases is less than full and they’re not as free to consent to the exchange—but that’s neither Garrus nor Joker, who are fully in charge of their cultural positioning.
The only potential problem with the Garrus-Joker convos is that they’re situated within a broader context of mutual distrust between their species, even if such distrust does not involve either of them as individuals. So while they are okay with lightening things up like this, no one person speaks for their race/species. “My Black friend gave me the N-word pass, so it’s okay for me to say it.” But your Black friend doesn’t speak for all Black persons, so it may be okay for you to interact that way only with him, if even then. Likewise, another Turian or human would be totally within their rights to find these jokes demeaning and ask Garrus and Joker to cut it out. Different contexts call for different standards. Again, humans and Turians are on roughly even ground, as neither species has oppressed or enslaved the other, so the broader context is not one-sided. This makes it a bit more okay.
In conclusion, what we see in Mass Effect is cultural speciesism motivated by expediency, attitudes, and politics. In a way, these are the ‘best’ conditions for racial tensions to occur. What makes racism particularly evil in the real world is its connection with a history of unilateral oppression. It wouldn’t be as bad to use racial slurs if we didn’t live in a society that was literally founded on racial oppression, but we do. But the people in ME do not, so in this less nuanced universe a speciesist character may still be potentially sympathetic.
Of course, one may still argue that it was too convenient for the writers to concoct exactly the sort of universe that allows characters to be racist and get away with it. Perhaps it’s like those people who use selective colorblindness (“I don’t see race”) as an excuse to not admit their racial biases, the scary faux-equality of lazy centrists with poor moral fiber. But, as usual, I like to give writers the benefit of the doubt and assume best intentions.
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