Is Safehold shades of monochrome?

I always considered that most safeholdian people are from a multiethnic background unless proven otherwise.

Zor

The simple answer is that the various ethnic groups you’ve listed no longer exist. Even when Ark was in the planning phases, the planners knew that was a rather likely outcome given the Chinese efforts to maintain their own culture. Smaller ethnic groups didn’t even stand a chance with only eight million colonists. And that’s before you start considering the consequences of suppressing their memories of high technology and figuring out just what to include in that category. No memories of technology. Ok. What about knowledge of other planets? That’s got to go, so how do you handle historical knowledge? Geography? Culture? Honestly, those questions probably helped Bédard justify wiping everything and starting anew. And when they did that, they eliminated even the very idea of ethnic groups.

When someone says “I’m black,” or “I’m a Native American,” they’re talking about more than skin color and genetic traits; they’re referring to a shared history that defines the group and links its members together. Eliminate that history, and there’s nothing linking them together. Skin color? Doesn’t matter; they have no historical context for why it would be anything other than just a random, shared physical trait doled out by a God who happens to like a little variety in his creation. You might as well be talking about eyebrow shape. That perspective is further bolstered by the random groupings of colonists on Safehold; everyone was mixed in together, except for large groups of those who would eventually become the Harchongese. And once those random pairings started having kids (and their kids had kids), those ethnic groups were blurred and eliminated without the colonists ever realizing that they even existed.

The traits we recognize as being part of specific ethnic groups are still on Safehold, they’re just scattered about more or less randomly based on which colonists were settled in each particular enclave. They’re just not recognized as such. Physical traits didn’t have to be homogenized genetically to accomplish that; it was already a foregone conclusion the moment Langhorne decided to wipe the colonists’ minds.

I suspect that most readers visualise the characters as being of the reader's own colour or ethnic group, apart from those defined specifically as of a particular colour or group. That seem a natural attitude for anyone who lives in a area where the majority all look much the same, the colour or group of those around you is what you see in your mind's eye when reading about undefined characters.
Cheers
John

imperatorzor wrote:I always considered that most safeholdian people are from a multiethnic background unless proven otherwise.

Zor

Bluestrike2 wrote:The simple answer is that the various ethnic groups you’ve listed no longer exist. Even when Ark was in the planning phases, the planners knew that was a rather likely outcome given the Chinese efforts to maintain their own culture. Smaller ethnic groups didn’t even stand a chance with only eight million colonists. And that’s before you start considering the consequences of suppressing their memories of high technology and figuring out just what to include in that category. No memories of technology. Ok. What about knowledge of other planets? That’s got to go, so how do you handle historical knowledge? Geography? Culture? Honestly, those questions probably helped Bédard justify wiping everything and starting anew. And when they did that, they eliminated even the very idea of ethnic groups.

When someone says “I’m black,” or “I’m a Native American,” they’re talking about more than skin color and genetic traits; they’re referring to a shared history that defines the group and links its members together. Eliminate that history, and there’s nothing linking them together. Skin color? Doesn’t matter; they have no historical context for why it would be anything other than just a random, shared physical trait doled out by a God who happens to like a little variety in his creation. You might as well be talking about eyebrow shape. That perspective is further bolstered by the random groupings of colonists on Safehold; everyone was mixed in together, except for large groups of those who would eventually become the Harchongese. And once those random pairings started having kids (and their kids had kids), those ethnic groups were blurred and eliminated without the colonists ever realizing that they even existed.

The traits we recognize as being part of specific ethnic groups are still on Safehold, they’re just scattered about more or less randomly based on which colonists were settled in each particular enclave. They’re just not recognized as such. Physical traits didn’t have to be homogenized genetically to accomplish that; it was already a foregone conclusion the moment Langhorne decided to wipe the colonists’ minds.

Recognizing that this is our Author, MWW, and his creation, and that he is not bound by any form of rigid logic beyond his own visualization, still there are some illogic here.

I recognize where and what you are specifying "Bluestrike2" but disagree with your sweeping statement of; "When someone says “I’m black,” or “I’m a Native American,” they’re talking about more than skin color and genetic traits" WHEN taken into the a priori perception by another person(s). The sense of self and group STARTS with Me, My Family, My Group ... and a lot of that starts with those who look ALIKE! Experiments with monkeys & apes where one of the group is made artificially different (dyed blue) and reintroduced show immediate disassociation. Thus it is not an individual's sense of ethnicity at work but the group's sense of 'otherness' that matters more!

Obviously Langhorne, Bédard & Co. did not, could not completely mind wipe and now we have some textev in HFQ that some latter work on St Khody was unsatisfactory when disturbed. Still, the "Adams & Eves" had to have basic adult skills; language, tool-use & literacy at the AWAKENING just to get started. And we know that they started with NAMES as a tool of self-identity AND knowledge of their mate! Were those names the ones that the colonists started with? From the textev (BSRA) deriving from the Alexandria Colony and Shan-wei's 2nd bow string, it appears that the names DID STAY the same.

So it appears that we have the historical names as ethnicity markers, do we not? The China Lobby got its ethnic colony with traditions and names, that is agreed. This appears to show that, regardless of the mind wipe and reprogramming, the names of the "Adams & Eves" were continued from their prior lives. So where are the African, Hindu, Melanesian, AmerIndian etc. names?

Just a thought on this thread.

As I recall, skin color is one of the most mutable human characteristics. It takes about 1,000 years to lose or gain coloration, assuming normal reproduction rates and a selection bias in favor of or more or less melanin (among other pigments) and no movement of the population in question.

Given the low population and extensive canal system, along with movement as the population expanded, I suspect that overall the planet has much less diversity than we have on Earth today - even the original colonists were probably significantly less diverse to start with after several centuries of population mixing between today and the first encounter with the Gbabba.

Well, as I have said on other threads, going through the series at a slower pace does give one the chance to 'catch' little things that a 1st or 2nd read can miss. This comes from "A Mighty Fortress" (AMF pg 499) at Madame Ahnzhelyk Phonda’s Townhouse, City of Zion, The Temple Lands;

Business was always good at Madame Ahnzhelyk’s, and never better than during the winter months, when the citizens of Zion turned inevitably to inside occupations. Young women— of all casts of complexion, but uniformly lovely— sat or stood with their guests, chatting easily, laughing.

Note the minimization by the use of 'complexion' - it would appear from this usage and setting in the theocratic capital of Safehold, that it is shades of complexion and not ethnicity that is presented.

Safehold is mostly monochromatic with some touches of the Asiatic and of local climatic & solar adaptations!