In the original Trek, Khan, with his brown skin, was an Übermensch, intellectually and physically perfect, possessed of such charisma and drive that despite his efforts to gain control of the Enterprise, Captain Kirk (and many of the other officers) felt admiration for him.

And that’s why the role has been taken away from actors of colour and given to a white man. Racebending.com has always pointed out that villains are generally played by people with darker skin, and that’s true … unless the villain is one with intelligence, depth, complexity. One who garners sympathy from the audience, or if not sympathy, then — as from Kirk — grudging admiration. What this new Trek movie tells us, what JJ Abrams is telling us, is that no brown-skinned man can accomplish all that. That only by having Khan played by a white actor can the audience engage with and feel for him, believe that he’s smart and capable and a match for our Enterprise crew.

The food movement has been slow to recognise the fact that worker rights and working conditions should be a key part of any discussion about the ethics of food. Reforms to the food system need to incorporate workers and their welfare, not just better farming practices, more humane treatment of animals, and other measures focusing on food as an end product. Food is also a process, and the people involved in that process have a right to fair treatment, something they don’t have currently. The continued marginalisation of farmworkers and the focus on other issues in the food movement speaks poorly of the movement overall, and reveals some telling attitudes about labour, race, and entitlement.

A few days ago, I was having lunch with a good friend who is Korean-American, and she told me that when she heard about the bombings at the Boston Marathon—the marathon itself being something she knew nothing about and immediately associated with white people—she found that she had a hard time…well, caring. I’m sure that sounds shocking to many people. But it didn’t shock me. Because I was having the same feelings myself.

I really noticed it a few months back, during coverage of the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings. As news outlet after news outlet flashed photograph after photograph of mostly white children across TV screens and computer screens alike, I felt something I hadn’t remembered ever feeling before upon hearing of the brutal murder of children: I felt numb. Not numb in the way that people in shock feel numb. Not numb because of the great weight of what had happened. This was a different kind of numbness.

I couldn’t help but think about Trayvon Martin. He wasn’t an elementary school kid when he was shot and killed by a racist with a gun, but he was just a 17-year-old boy, unarmed, walking down the street with a bag of Skittles. I thought of countless other Black youth who have been murdered by crazed gunmen with badges and police uniforms in the last few years. I also thought about the hundreds of brown children in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan who have been killed by US forces on the ground and by drone strikes. I thought about how many times I didn’t see any of their faces, smiling and innocent, splashed across the TV or the internet for days and weeks on end. I thought about how white people I know weren’t posting links to stories about those children and what had happened to them. That they weren’t writing Facebook statuses about how unbearable those kids’ deaths were. And, seeing pictures of those little blonde children—because the blonde ones are always featured most prominently—I felt numb.

To paraphrase Mad Men: “Not every little girl gets to do what they want. The world could not support that many ballerinas… or Ivy League graduates.” My advice to Suzy, Abigail, and every other white girl who didn’t get into their first choice of college this year is to keep your rejection out of the public eye and do what every other kid does when they go off to school in the fall: give it the ol’ college try. Seriously, make the most of the environment around you, and if you really don’t like it? Again, keep the Wall Street Journal out of it; have an amazing first year and apply for transfer. And do it while understanding that the group of Black, Native, and Asian, and Latina freshman hanging out on a Harvard quad had nothing to do with you not getting in in the first place. That was your own comparative mediocrity.

To the skeptics preparing to ask me whether I’d prefer to live in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan since I think the US is so awful, I wonder if you realize the level to which US foreign policy towards certain parts of the world has intensified violence against women. Backing sexist dictatorial rulers, knowingly arming religious fundamentalists who throw acid in women’s faces and forcing neoliberal economic policies that leave small farmers (most of whom are women) and their families starving; these are the policies that define the United States to many women abroad.

Black men occupy an interesting place in the popular imagination. Their superhuman sexuality is an integral part of American lore. It’s most prominently on display in the titles of pornographic videos that market the ability of big black men to ravish young, innocent white women. It’s more subtle in the white women who walk past with their eyes firmly locked on my crotch, undoubtedly pondering the question that the bold will occasionally whisper in a dark corner of a house party: “Is it true?” And the misguided among us will certainly whisper “yes” through a sly grin, unaware that entangled with the superhuman lore of the black penis is the dangerous specter of dehumanization. This strange combination of fear and fascination reveals the superhuman-subhuman duality that black men embody.

The very same superhuman virility fuels fear of black men. It’s why white women run from us in the hallways, scream when they see us jogging toward them in the street, tell us we look dangerous, and clutch their purses in elevators if they get on the elevator at all (these are actual anecdotes from me and a friend, some of which occur occasionally, others, regularly). A few decades ago, these fearful reactions would be enough to put us in danger of mob violence, regardless of how benign our presence may have been. Even now, racial hoaxes are an ever-present danger. When white people claim to have been victimized by a fictitious black man, hundreds of innocent black men are endangered as law enforcement officials search out the supposed assailant. While perceptions of hypermasculinity elevate us to the superhuman, they simultaneously reduce us to subhuman status.

When I asked Miss Major how the recession has affected transgender women and men, she laughed humorlessly and said, “We don’t have jobs to lose. We never had pensions for a company to take from us. I used to get $50 for a blowjob and now I get $25. The cost of me has gone down. And I’m going to accept it because I have to, whether it’s $25 or $50. I have to eat; rent’s due, I have to get it somehow.” Under the new economic regime, informal sector workers including transgender people may be working more hours and under potentially riskier circumstances. Miss Major estimates that since the start of the recession, twelve social service organizations in California alone have cut services that transgender clients depended on. She has extended her workday to include more one-on-one time and case management with community members coping with additional financial burdens.