10 Times Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Went Woke
3. Single Black Fatherhood
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine first aired in 1993, not long after the LA Riots, and four years after the end of Ronald Reagan's Presidency in the United States. While television offered strong black male characters at the time, notably with James Avery's Uncle Phil on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the 'absent black father' trope had become entrenched in the zeitgeist.
Avery Brooks was more interested in portraying a strong, black father figure in Star Trek than anything else. Both he and Cirroc Lofton have spoken at length about their relationship, both on and off-screen. Ben Sisko is a widower, raising his son alone, now in Emissary assigned to a remote space station. In the tense encounter with Captain Picard, he tells the man he is considering resigning his commission.
In The Myth of the Missing Black Father, edited by Roberta L. Coles and Charles Green, one of the conclusions found in the book was that,
...ironically, most absent in the literature on black fatherhood have been those fathers who are most present: black, single full-time fathers.
The book argues that, despite the stereotype, single black fathers were, in the early 1990s, more prevalent than depicted. Angelica Jade Bastién, in her article Deep Space Nine Is TV’s Most Revolutionary Depiction of Black Fatherhood, points to Deep Space Nine as a critical example for these depictions, as other examples, like the aforementioned Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, Good Times, and even The Cosby Show, were often taken less seriously due to being comedies.
In 1993, casting a black man as the lead of a Star Trek show was itself a statement. To make that lead character a single black father was a direct challenge to the narrative already so firmly entrenched in television. This was a show, despite its Sci-Fi setting and alien prosthetics, to be taken seriously. So too was Ben Sisko, father, widower, and leader.