It does piss me off when actors, particularly from Star Trek, who supposedly represent a better future for humanity, become mired in very bitter divisive and highly opinionated politics.
Another who has disappointed me is Levarr Burton, and his obsession with black victimhood and identity politics, and calling people as milquetoast and moderate as Mitt Rommey "white racist".
As Paul Levitz said in answer to a similarly angry black reader letter in LEGION 297, who saw racism in discontinuing Tyroc and introducing a French-speaking black African character, Jacques Foccart/Invisible Kid, and comments by Levitz in a fanzine interview, that this reader interpreted as a racist exclusion of an African American character. To which Paul Levitz responded:
Actually, my quote in the interview was to say that by the thirtieth century I believe racial problems will be a thing of the past, and that certainly includes the holocaaust. If not, I rather doubt there ever will be a thirtieth century. For that reason, I found Tyroc's origin (as a character who came from an island of blacks who had formed a separatist state to avoid prejudice) anachronistic, as was the scene in that issue where all the Legionnaires pointed to their skin color to show they weren't prejudiced (see --we have green, blue and orange people). Jacques Foccart was introduced not for the sake of his color, but as a hopefully interesting character, with a French accent because of his origin on the Ivory Coast of Africa, where the French have taken great pains to help their language live on. An "American Black" (quotes because in the thirieth century our stories presume America is no longer a distinct political or social boundary) would speak Interlac exactly as the other Legionnaires do, so the accent was added for an extra touch --without my being aware of the particular example of prejudice you mention existing in the modeling industry.
You have seen Jacques in considerable action in previous issues, and more will follow. As well as more presence of other ethnic groups in 30th century stories, something I admit we've neglected from time to time, not from prejudice but with preoccupation with our existing characters. --Paul Levitz
In the example of Gene Rodedenberry and other writers of the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, I saw them as projecting a unified and better future, in an effort to create a vision for a better future to imagine and aspire toward. A future with true unity and a shared universal culture, without prejudice, without resentments and warring subcultures.
In recent years, I've seen actors like Levarr Burton and Patrick Stewart, and like-minded leftist writers, projecting their prejudices onto the future, as a vision for preserving those grudges long into the future, and thus sabotaging the future.
I'm pretty sure that worries about Brexit and the Orange Bad Man will be long past in that future. The petty grudges of these actors will be seen as anachronisms, that will diminish their own legacy. They will be seen as part of the problem, that eventually faded away.
I think in future retrospective, Trump's presidency while controversial and hotly disputed in its time, will be seen (like the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan) as having shown great leadership and made difficult choices toward a vision of the future, that preserved and resurrected a United States, and a world, that was in jeopardy before his presidency eliminated those dangers.
