The racial diversity portrayed on science fiction programs like Star Trek the Next Generation is unrealistic. Programs like 1960's era Doctor Who, which portrayed a mono-racial society are more likely to be accurate.
The reason for this can be seen in mathematics. The first episode of STNG takes place in the year 2364, 344 years from today. Assuming an average of 25 years per generation, we get 13.7 generations in the future. So (excluding the aliens and android) each character would have (2^13.76) or 13,873 ancestors alive today.
Marriages of mixed ethnicity are quite common today. And in the world of Star Trek they are displayed as overwhelmingly the norm. The chances of such an ancestry producing anyone who looks like Jean-Luc Picard or Geordi La Forge are indeed slim. Instead, all humanity would have mixed into one fairly uniform race. (What that race would look like would be a complex question - We can't assume that a simple average of all existing races would occur.)
Racial diversity exists today because 344 years ago, races were highly segregated, with even such similar cases as Irish + British mixes being notable.
Conclusion: Anyone who wants to include racial diversity in a science fiction program will need to include a mechanism in their background story explaining why such diversity still exists.
The reason for this can be seen in mathematics. The first episode of STNG takes place in the year 2364, 344 years from today. Assuming an average of 25 years per generation, we get 13.7 generations in the future. So (excluding the aliens and android) each character would have (2^13.76) or 13,873 ancestors alive today.
Marriages of mixed ethnicity are quite common today. And in the world of Star Trek they are displayed as overwhelmingly the norm. The chances of such an ancestry producing anyone who looks like Jean-Luc Picard or Geordi La Forge are indeed slim. Instead, all humanity would have mixed into one fairly uniform race. (What that race would look like would be a complex question - We can't assume that a simple average of all existing races would occur.)
Racial diversity exists today because 344 years ago, races were highly segregated, with even such similar cases as Irish + British mixes being notable.
Conclusion: Anyone who wants to include racial diversity in a science fiction program will need to include a mechanism in their background story explaining why such diversity still exists.
