I came to the conclusion, long ago, that although the colour of a person's skin, or her/his ethnic affiliation, may be very important to that person it is none of my business and should have no effect on my dealings with her/him.

One thing which does concern me about this thread, though, is its 'killjoy' nature. The way in which a thread, which promised to be about fascinating 'cosmic things', like dark matter, turned into a thread about racism rather put my back up. I detect an element of the school of thought that opines that we should not even consider the wider Universe whilst cruelty and injustice exists in the human sphere. My own viewpoint is that an understanding of our place in the Universe gives us a better perspective on attitudes such as racism and reveals just how stupid, petty and ignorant such attitudes are.

And 'Star Trek' was only ever a soap opera with rudimentary SF trappings. The writers of this 'epic' consistently failed to think their plot devices through and were only really interested in the contrived 'conflicts' between their 2-dimensional characters. Another example, in my book, of narrow, parochial thinking.