Spock, the Outsider

"For years, he was about the closest viewers could get to a multiracial role model on American TV."
Robert Ito

"Hands down, the most popular reason that people connect to Spock is that he makes them feel like it's O.K. to be an Other. It's O.K. to be outside the mainstream."
Adam Nimoy



Spock's most attractive trait is not his brain, not his ears. It is his outsider status resulting from having a Vulcan father and a human mother. As Nimoy's son puts it, 99% of the people he asked what they liked about Spock said "the fact that he's an outsider".

Spock needs to choose his (Vulcan) logical or (human) emotional self in different situations. There is hardly an integration of the two selves. According to Teresa Williams-León (California State University), this is "an interesting way of looking at how biracial people have had to suppress aspects of themselves, or one part of themselves."

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- Ito, R. (2016) Outsider Appeal of Spock. The New York Times International Weekly, Der Standard, 24 October 2016, p. 4
- photograph via