Moderating:
This is Cafe society. This is not the place for political debates. This thread is a suitable place to mention any kiss that the poster considers interracial. If there might be any confusion as to the races involved (and you should always assume that there are readers who aren’t familiar with your topic, so in general, you should assume there might be such confusion) it’s helpful to mention the races of the people kissing.
Specifically, the Indian Wells Resort Hotel. It’s still there and nice enough (stayed there during the tennis tournament). Lots of beautiful pictures of Desi and Lucy, even with them kissing!
(I’m not associated with the hotel in any way, except as a former customer, but two-clicking commercial link.)
I bet the first ‘black’-white kiss happened earlier, unknowingly maybe even to the person involved. With the ridiculous ‘even one drop’ standard, someone didn’t ‘look black’ but had even a single black ancester many generations ago would have been considered black and might not know it if some ancestor along the line had decided to ‘pass.’
And the first Native American/White person kiss was probably played by two white people given the casting norms of the early westerns.
Because Star Trek was a Popular TV series in the 60s, Gene Roddenberry used it as his personal vehicle to voice his “political” values. Gene felt that 200 years in the future, human beings (if they didn’t all kill each other first) would be more accepting of others, and they would actually celebrate their differences.
One way Gene accomplished this was by making the bridge crew interracial, even to the point of having an alien as First Officer.
When Plato’s Stepchildren was sceduled to be aired, there was a frenzy in the South. Many TV stations protested to NBC because of the interracial kiss, and when the episode aired, some of those stations did not show it.
I remember even reading in TV Guide magazine about the brouhaha.
I don’t know if any of the other above-listed incidents of interracial kissing caused such a massive cry of outrage, leading to that episode being cancelled in certain market areas.
There’s a reason for the incredible fandom of the Star Trek universe. Plato’s Stepchildren is just one of them.
LLAP,
~VOW
I feel like one thing that should be said about that list is that if it’s not William Shatner, the man certainly seemed to be trying his damnedest to snag it.
Even if you consider all racial divisions to be artificial, Shatner is still in the running because Captain Kirk made out with non-terrestrial females also.
I hope he didn’t just push for the Star Trek kiss with Nichols out of ego instead of wanted to stick it to the bigots.
Well, maybe not always ego. Let’s not rule out the possibility of libido, too.
(IIRC, some reporter once asked him if he had any reluctance about the interracial kiss, and his response was something like “Are you kidding me? Have you seen Nichelle?”)
Yeah, I was impressed that of 10 potential “first interacial kiss on US television by this or that criterion” listings, William Shatner is in 4 of them.
Hell of a Guinness record.
There’s no telling his motivation, but apparently the two of them agreed that they wanted the kiss to air.
NBC finally ordered that two versions of the scene be shot—one in which Kirk and Uhura kissed and one in which they did not. Having successfully recorded the former version of the scene, Shatner and Nichelle Nichols deliberately flubbed every take of the latter version, thus forcing the episode to go out with the kiss intact.
My reply with reference to William Shatner’s ego was in response to @Love_Rhombus post whether Shatner cooperated with the kissing scene out of ego, or to stick it to the bigots.
And at that time, Shat was all about his ego.
~VOW
I agree, but my point is that he and Nichols conspired together to ruin the takes. She may not have cared about his motivations, or they may have discussed it and decided together for upstanding reasons. Big ego doesn’t preclude additional motivtion to do the right thing.
I saw that on first reading as “his damnedest to shag it”.
did you read the list that THE CUSE provided? All of the above you mentioned.
but Nichols was already sleeping with Roddenberry by that time
If I recall, the bathrooms were labeled “white” and “colored” - if you weren’t considered white enough you were colored. So, in fact, there were plenty of places where Jim Crow lumped Hispanics in with Blacks.
Not cool to diss someone’s personal/family experience, either.
(that’s what I chose for a snort)