Howling:Is the Master a racist

I was just wondering about the sound of drums when the master makes a pretty horrible comment to Martha and Jack. Was he meant to be racist I mean I assumed it was because he bassically calls Martha a freak and jack a girl but I added that to his character page and someone took it off literally a second later so have I misread that was he meant to be joking or just trying to rile the Doctor or something does anyone know if RTD meant to add that to his character with that or if it was just as I said a joke. Its a pretty big thing to add to his character he never seemed prejudiced before LOL Physcopath murderer but not prejudiced. Winehousefan, 19:40, July 16 2010 [UTC


 * No, when he said he's not sure which is which, it is referring to the fact that, yes Jack is omnisexual, but also that Jack can't die (ie a freak) so he may think Jack is the girl and kill Martha. Not really racist. But in the TV movie he comes kind of close. He says "The Asian Child". The Thirteenth Doctor 19:35, July 16, 2010 (UTC)

Hello...He's not even a human...listing Martha is an inadequate example for racism...not to mention that you'll have to list pretty much all other villains as racists too...

Doing something radical like this will lead our intelligence closer to the writers for Series 3 where all historical figures are extremely nice and polite to Martha, effectively denying racism ever existed...I wanted to smash the television for the stupidity...She was suppose to be a bloody slave, go scream at and abuse her...make her suffer and make us feel sorry...It was like having a current drug addict lecturing us on the harms of drugs then immediately does a demo of injecting small amount of drugs...--203.168.176.42 19:45, July 16, 2010 (UTC)

Forget the Master, what about the Daleks? They wanted to eradicate every other species for not being one of them. Now that is racism. 80.42.92.215 17:06, July 21, 2010 (UTC)

The Master isn't racist; he holds everyone but himself in contempt, regardless of race. 89.242.68.115 06:29, May 28, 2011 (UTC)

The Master's absoultely racist; he flaunts being a Time Lord in humanity's face, and according to the Doctor, thinks they're degenerate. I don't think he was specifically showing Martha and Jack extra racism, he was just trying to be insulting. Sorryaboutthatchief 08:03, May 28, 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. He probably doesn't see black humans as anything lesser than white humans, but he does see both as less than Time Lords. He's said many times on camera (and even more times in novels and BFAs) that human lives mean no more than those of insects.

And as for him being homophobic--please, we're talking about the guy who fondled Mike Yates' bum every week for a year, tied Adric up in bondage, and was always clearly in love with "my dear Doctor". Any extra contempt he has for Jack (and I'm not sure he has any) would just be because Jack thinks that, as a 51st century time-traveling human, he has the audacity to think he's closer to the Time Lords, which to the Master is like a slug thinking it's closer to human than a snail. --99.33.24.89 09:59, May 28, 2011 (UTC)

203, which episodes are you talking about? There were three historicals in series 3:


 * Human Nature, in 1913 England, had at least one openly racist remark toward Martha, and multiple instances of people assuming she must be a servant because she's black. Only the other maids and one of the students treated her as a full human. Writer Paul Cornell said that one of his biggest worries in adapting the story from his novel (where the companion was a white woman, Benny) was that he'd have a hard time portraying the insidisious subtle sexism when the racism would be much more obvious.


 * The Shakespeare Code, in 1599 England, had everyone treating Martha as something exotic, and pretty much not knowing what to think of her. They didn't treat Martha as a slave because 16th century England didn't import black slaves. While they did kidnap people from Africa and sell them in the Carribean, the only slaves back home were indentured servants and convicts on work tickets, who were white Englishmen and Irishmen. (In fact, the major hurdle faced by the abolitionists in the 18th century was that most Englishmen knew nothing at all about the slave trade.)


 * Daleks in Manhattan, in 1930 America. This one was egregious. The people of Hooverville follow Solomon without a single person ever objecting, or suggesting that maybe people would pay more attention to their plight if they had a white leader, or even apparently noticing that he's black. Irish and Italians work side-by-side with each other and with WASPs and all get along. Diagoras complains about all the reasons people didn't respect him, and never mentions his Greek ancestry. Martha wanders through high society without anyone asking why there's a negress coming in the front door.

But that's one story that got it very wrong, and two that got it right. Hardly enough to say the series denied that racism ever existed. --99.33.24.89 09:59, May 28, 2011 (UTC)