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Racist jackasses going apeshit over a black stormtrooper.

While the EU was jettisoned for the purposes of the new movies storyline, it’s not like they can’t take a few elements from it that work, and expanding the recruiting pool of stormtroopers to normal humans is certainly one I’d see them taking.

The Battle of Endor was a crushing defeat. Thousands, at least, of the Empires most elite troops *gone*, with relatively minimal losses to the Rebellion. The scale of the victory would have given many more worlds hope, and pushed them to join the Rebel Alliance. The surviving Moffs would have had a serious problem- it’s unlikely they’d have ordered enough extra clones to serve as a hedge against a disaster on this scale. A little more than expected replacement as a “just in case” reserve, but this many more? Not likely, especially while devoting the resources to build a new Death Star that is much larger than the old one.

The Empire would need tens of thousands of new troops RIGHT NOW to replace their losses and deal with an expanded rebellion. There’s just no way that waiting for clones to mature would ever work- they’d have to take normal humans. It’s the only chance they possibly have to win the war, and likely the only chance they’d have of preserving enough strength to negotiate a peace that lets them still exist.  Hell, just managing internal issues on worlds that don’t defect would require many more troops in the wake of the death of Emperor Palpatine and the redemption/death of Darth Vader.

Given this… why wouldn’t they grab a black guy? The Empire was speciesist, but racist within humanity, there isn’t much evidence. Even if they are racist within humanity, they need bodies and grabbing a black guy to throw into the front lines as cannon fodder sounds like the exact thing racist assholes would do when they need bodies for the army.

Also- we don’t actually know that this guy is a stormtrooper.  He’s wearing the armor, but so did Han and Luke.  This could be a controversy over something that actually isn’t true.  Part of me wants the racists angry by this being an actual stormtrooper, part of me wants them to feel stupid when it isn’t.  Not sure which I want more.