For the millennials in the audience, he also taught us about recycling and care of the earth as the voice of Kwame on Captain Planet.
Next Generation is the closest my family got to a family TV show that wasn’t the news but somehow, this moment is usually my first LeVar Burton thought.
This whole bit is so funny.
My personal hero, and he never let me down. His enthusiasm as Geordi helped me embrace my passion for engineering early in school.
But you don’t have to take my word for it
Same.
And what do Bob, Fred and Levar have in common?
PBS
A common good in the USA.
Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high…
🎼Take a look, it’s in a book…
Wait. This is where the design for the “Baltimore, there’s more than murder here” bumper stickers come from?
And of course, there was a Star Trek episode of Reading Rainbow. I think Sir Patrick Stewart also read a book on a couple of episodes.
I told Pearce a thousand times I never wanted to meet Levar in person! I just wanted a picture, you can’t disappoint a picture!
I like LeVar Burton for Star Trek: The Next Generation, but I’ve also read (and listened to) his book, Aftermath. It’s a bit heavy on racial tones, but I think that was the point. In his dystopian future, the sun causes a lot more cases of skin cancer, but only in those fairer of skin, so Black people are hunted and skinned, with their skin being grafted onto rich white people to help keep them from getting cancer. Like a skin transplant. I guess that’s easier than figuring out how to just add melanin to the skin somehow? Like reproducing it in a lab? Sounds like something Geordi and Data would attempt. But Burton didn’t write Geordi and there’s no indication he’s an engineer IRL, he just played one on TV. What he is, is a writer. And I guess he wanted to address racism. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good book, but a bit heavy handed at times.
The book never gets mentioned and I think it should.
This is the first I’ve heard of this book, I’m assuming it was written years ago prior to ‘Melanotan 2’ being a thing. It’s a peptide which at high enough doses it can effectively transform the fairest skinned caucasian to a skin complexion to that of someone who is from Sub-Saharan Africa. The entire premise seems a little far fetched when there is a relatively simple solution available.
At high enough doses it also gives you day-long priapism. There’s a reason it’s not popular lol
Levar Burton wrote a story to entertain and to make people think. Nothing wrong with that, even if the subject matter is aversive or you can think of a plot hole
Oh don’t get me wrong I LOVE Levar, and I’m interested in checking out the book. It just seems like an odd choice looking back, then again a lot of sci-fi tends to age that way.
It was written years ago, to answer your first question. Burton actually revised it, and that’s what the audiobook transcribes — he narrates it, too, so you can have him read his book to you. I don’t recall what was changed, if he said.
I’m not familiar with the product you mentioned, and he might not be, or he might have been but wrote his book in a world where it’s not an option. Also cruelty is a factor in the book, it’s white peoples exploiting and hurting Black people in s different context.
Give Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis” a read. It’s an allegory on slavery, race mixing, and the power dynamics of consent, but involving humans and aliens who are more powerful
The Wikipedia page is a bit dry, what’s a good read about why he matters to you guys? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeVar_Burton
He hosted the PBS kids’ educational show Reading Rainbow starting in 1983, so anyone roughly 45 and younger likely grew up watching him talk about books and reading. He also had a big role in Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1987-1994, which might have been the most watched Star Trek series, and which was basically a series of lessons in ethical decision-making.
Also Roots.
Reading Rainbow was on from 1983 to 2006. 21 seasons. I had no idea.
As somebody outside the us I never heard of him not before I saw community :(
For anyone interested, there is q pretty good documentary about Reading Rainbow. It’s called # Butterfly in the Sky iirc
its because he went blind and became an engineer
Over here people mostly only know Bob Ross, he actually made it onto German television.
