Good Riddance to the Racism of "Game of Thrones"

This April, Game of Thrones will kick off its long-awaited eighth and final season. Hopefully, the series finale will mark the end of unnecessary racism in American television. When Game of Thrones debuted I gave it a shot like millions of other people. A medieval-ish fantasy series on HBO? Hell yeah. I like battle axes as much as the next guy. But eight years later one thing is painfully apparent. Westeros is no place for Black people. While the immensely popular show features dragons, giants, zombies and witches, a more insidious aspect of the sword-and-snow epic is the fact that nearly all of its Black characters began as slaves, including: Missandei, who goes from slave immediately to Daenerys Targaryen's lady-in-waiting; and Grey Worm and his fellow castrated "Unsullied" soldiers. The one Black character whose origin hasn't definitively been revealed to include slavery, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, who presents himself as "the Richest Man in Qarth", was exposed as a charlatan with no gold in his vault.

Sure, the show is adapted from a book series that draws inspiration from the real-life Wars of the Roses of the 15th century, so given the faux medieval setting, this could be chalked up to a case of historical accuracy. But the inclusion of the aforementioned mythical creatures place the show squarely in the fantasy category. In fact, the events of the series take place on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos -- as opposed to the real world.

The bottom line: None of the Black characters needed to be slaves and it certainly wasn't necessary for a disproportionate number of the show's slaves to be Black. These were intentional choices that were made by the writers.

Game of Thrones will reportedly be spun off into a prequel series following the original's finale later this year. Hopefully, any future GoT-related projects will be bigotry-free.

Originally Posted 3/11/19