Alien Nation

There is something smelly about Science Fiction shows using clashes of different sentient species as a metaphor for race or ethnicity or culture in order to talk about how "we" (whoever this "we" is) deal with The Other™. Race is an ideology. It is not biological. Nor are ethnicity and cultural difference. The idea that racial or ethnic conflict exist because people just have trouble with "Those Who Look Differently" is a cretinous absurdity that ought to disgrace even a college activist. The implication, or assumption, behind much of this genre of putatively socially aware storytelling in Science Fiction is that these differences are much more essential than they are in fact. The culture producing this stuff seems to take as a matter of pious faith that the way to "get beyond differences" is by obsessing over them, taking for granted their fixity. So much so that different biological species seem sensical as a metaphor for different groups of humans. It lends itself particularly well to tales of people expressing their "essential nature" in categorical terms.