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There's No Canonical Reason Stormtroopers Can't Be Black

By Alexander Joenks | Star Wars | December 3, 2014 |

By Alexander Joenks | Star Wars | December 3, 2014 |


There was a minor eruption on the Internet when the trailer for Episode VII otherwise caused a great disturbance in the force as if a million childhoods suddenly cried out all at once in joy only to be silenced suddenly in the swelling swoon as the Millennium Falcon danced in the desert skies. The minute back ripple of douchery was the tiny set of trolls hiding behind protests of loyalty to canon in order to shrilly squawk that a black dude couldn’t be a storm trooper because storm troopers were all clones of a half-Maori New Zealander. Not that there’s a New Zealand in a galaxy far far away anyway, but their point is that clones sort of you know, look like each other. And it’s totally not about John Boyega being black, it’s just that they care ever so deeply about the consistency of the Star Wars universe.

I kind of prefer militant racists to pedantic nerd trolls, because at least there’s an honesty to their violent idiocy. Say what you want about the tenets of national socialism, Star War purists, at least it’s an ethos.

So you want to play canon? Let’s play canon.

It was never actually established on screen that the stormtroopers were clones. Oh it was implied that the clone army that Palpatine controlled was what became the stormtroopers in the chronologically later films, but only due to the fact that he controlled them and they wore similar armor. In fact, there is on screen evidence that the stormtroopers are not clones at all, due to the fact that in several different scenes, it can be clearly seen that stormtroopers have slightly different heights and builds. In addition, they have different voices in the original trilogy, not all the same cloned voice. An oversight, you might say, an artifact of making those films with actual actors and not green screens. Bitch please, you don’t get to start a pedantry fight and then complain that someone split a hair too finely. If you throw the first punch you don’t get to complain that the other guy hits too hard.