There has been a lot of talk lately about the White Male Blogger.

Tom Boucher has been thinking out loud about this stuff, and he linked to me in the context of the following paragraph:

I guess it amuses me how people struggle to find patterns of oppression in all things. Battlestar Galactica (the new version) doesn't have enough black people (never mind they got just about everyone else including a hispanic guy in charge of everything and a woman as the president). I mean only a subordinate is black, and then the prisoners were black, but no one important is black. Never mind that it's filmed in Vancouver. Wonder what their population mix is of the 'races'.

While I realize that the point of Tom’s post is not to address the issue of black people on the new Battlestar Galactica show, I’m going to focus on it anyway. I mean, he, like, linked to me and stuff, so I’m going to respond.

I’ve heard the argument before that the demographics of the city (Vancouver, BC) in which BSG is filmed aren’t conducive to having a lot of black people on, but I’d like to point out that there seemed to be plenty of black people available for the prison ship.

Anyway, I certainly wasn’t looking for “patterns of oppression.” To the contrary, I thought I went out of my way in that post to explain that, of all people, I’m one of the last to assume racism first.

However you wrap the argument, it was a stupid mistake. Almost no black people, and then, on board a prison ship, tons.

If they were able to cast them for that show, then I don’t see why they couldn’t cast them for other roles as well. I don’t think demographics were the problem here.