Raffi


Raffi's life, personality, and role in this show makes no sense whatsoever.

From what we have been led to believe in much of Star Trek Lore, life for civilians in the Federation (unless you were living in a frontier colony) was actually very comfortable and peaceful. Nobody was poor, you could have anything you wanted from replicators, live anywhere you wanted on Earth, go anywhere you wanted, get help if you had a drug problem (which was almost non-existent in that era), and become whoever you wanted to be. Families were mostly pretty stable, and there was no reason for there to be a lot of dysfunctional people in that culture, save for those who lived on the literal fringes of Federation space and beyond.

And yet here we are, seeing a black woman living in a crappy trailer in a rocky desert national park that looks suspiciously familiar (Kirk, anyone?), vaping, addicted to some kind of alien drug weed, drinking like a fish, hating herself, and not doing so well in general, and she acts like it's society's fault she ended up that way. She is a really messed-up woman, and such a woman would not actually exist in a peaceful utopian society like that. No way.

There was absolutely no reason for her to live that way, none. She could have lived in a nicer home; she wanted to live that way because of how terrible her life had become after the Hobus Supernova incident. There was even talk of Starfleet sending people offering to help her with her addictions several times, and Raffi rejecting every one of them.

And yet she has the nerve to lecture Picard on his "privilege" in living in a chateau? She's jealous of a guy who's living a life she could easily have herself? He inherited that from his family! That isn't a crime, nor is his societal status really a privilege, to be honest. He settled down there to escape the emotional pain and anger that Starfleet had brought him, just like Raffi had done to run off to that desert park. In fact, there was a scene where that bitchy Starfleet admiral (who had no business really doing a job like that), scheming to keep Picard on his family land; keep him not motivated to do anything of galactic importance.

I would understand the rift between her and her son, considering she was once a workaholic who put her career over family (probably dumped him on earth with his dad the moment he was old enough to walk), but honestly, her character was written like some messed-up, blue-collar, inter-city, broken dysfunctional family woman from our century. And whoever sired her son was a real piece of work, because the kid grew up to be such an asshole that only a Vulcan woman with suppressed emotions could tolerate him as a husband, and that's saying a lot. It can't all be Raffi's fault that he ended up that way.

Part of the reason we have women like Raffi in our present is due to poverty and violence in our society, and neither should exist on Earth or any settled planet in the Federation in that future. Did the people who wrote her character forget what world she lived in? Or were they too busy watching angry black people in L.A, yelling on tv to notice?

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