Light and Dark: An Introduction to Racism in Star Wars

By Anna Heneise

The infamous Order 66 sequence in Revenge of the Sith (2005) begins with Commander Cody opening a message from Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. The order is issued. Without a second of hesitation the commander orders his troops to fire on Obi-Wan Kenobi, the man whose lost lightsaber he had returned with a smile moments before. 

Scene by scene, the audience is shown the entirety of the clone army was in on O66. When Palpatine ordered them to slaughter the Jedi, they slaughtered the Jedi, without a single soldier questioning the validity or necessity of such an order. 

The character of Jango Fett, and by extension his clones, was played by New Zealand/Aotearoa actor Temuera Morrison in Attack of the Clones (2002). Morrison reprised his role as various clone soldiers during Revenge of the Sith, and voiced clone characters along with Jango Fett and Boba Fett in several video games released between 2002 and 2006. 

The prequels largely skipped the war part of the Clone Wars, so Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008-2020) came into being. For the show dozens of clone characters were created and given more complexity than they’d received in the prequels. They were depicted as noble, brave, and skilled soldiers, proud to serve the Republic, and shown to have built trust and camaraderie with the Jedi, some clone officers becoming friends with their Jedi counterparts. Accordingly, the clones’ knowing participation in O66 was retconned into a Sith mind control plot. 

Completely coincidentally, instead of being voiced by Temuera Morrison as they were in the video games, the now reformed clone characters were voiced by Dee Bradley Baker. They were animated with notably lighter skin and sharper features, and Captain Rex— General Skywalker’s second in command and therefore the clone with the largest role in the narrative— was blond. 

This is a pattern. James Earl Jones is the iconic voice of Darth Vader, the Emperor’s right hand, the attack dog of a fascist regime— but when Vader is unmasked Hayden Christensen is the face of Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One. 

Star Wars, for all its surface level complexity, is a very simple story with a very simple message. Most of the world building and many of the conflicts in the Star Wars universe are centered around the Force— the living energy that infuses the galaxy. The Force is good, and through their sensitivity to it and study of it Jedi seek to do good for the sake of doing good. Instead of choosing the Force, the Sith choose the Dark— a corruption of the Force. 

Originally there was no concept of the Light side. There was only the Force and the Dark, with the Jedi trusting in the Force and the Sith pursuing the Dark for power. 

Similarly, the symbolism is simplistic. Blue and green lightsabers for the Jedi, red for the Sith. Luke Skywalker starts his journey to become a Jedi in simple white robes while our introduction to the Sith is Vader’s hulking black-clad form. 

The trouble is this very literal light and dark symbolism did not remain in the costumes and props where it should have, but became a factor of casting choices. Not all at once, and especially not so much in the original trilogy. Lucas wanted to draw parallels to Nazi Germany with his Empire commanded by middle-aged White men and defended by Stormtroopers. But, in the stark divide between Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker, in the complexities of Lando Calrissian’s betrayal, a pattern started. And when it came time to create the prequels, to cast Jango Fett and in doing so determine the face of an army of traitors, Temuera Morrison was chosen. 

Not all Star Wars heroes are White, and not all villains are not-White, but in Star Wars characters of color are not often permitted to be paragons. If they are heroes, it is only because they struggled with some innate flaw and overcame it. If they are villains, their chance of redemption without death is much, much lower. 

Many Jedi characters who are secondary in the movies or exist primarily outside of them are people of color— Mace Windu, Cere Junda, Quinlan Vos, Depa Billaba, Ezra Bridger— but these characters consistently struggle with the Dark, and are often written to be species other than human who simply happen to pass for human. One faction of resistance against the Empire is lead by a Black man, Saw Gerrera, who resorts to terrorism and torture. Of the fourteen black masked Sith Inquisitors two are human. Neither are White. Most alien species, such as the Tuskens, the Toydarians, the Gungans, are coded as minority cultures using the most basic and offensive stereotypes. 

None of this is unique to Star Wars. Racism is a part of American culture and Star Wars is a product of American culture. Star Wars is racist the same way most media that is uncritical of American culture is racist. But because Star Wars is so visible and so enduring, this compounded message of lighter is good and darker is bad and anybody who is not White is very literally alien has become visible, has become enduring. This racialized division of villains and heroes has become a mainstay of mainstream Science Fiction. 

The thing about Star Wars is this story built itself backwards— expanding and re-contextualizing everything present in the original movies to create a complex history of interconnecting legacies. This includes themes of compassion and forgiveness, but also this foundational symbolism where darker features indicate a Dark soul. 

In The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Boba Fett was played by Jeremy Bulloch and voiced by Jason Wingreen. He was scary, and did some horrible things, but he was not a part of the family squabble at the center of the original trilogy. He had no family and no legacy of his own to invest him in these events, or for the audience to become invested in.

In parallel with Vader, Boba Fett is a villain who remains masked throughout the original trilogy, only to gain a proper backstory in the prequels. But when he is unmasked it is not for the sake of humanization, as was the case with Anakin Skywalker’s slow fall to the Dark and sudden return to the Light. When he is unmasked it is to reveal he shares the dark face of a genocidal mercenary; it is to reveal not only is he a villain but so was his father and so were his siblings and it is to show redemption will not come as easy for him as it did for the White man hidden under Vader’s black body.