Diversity and Discrimination in Andor and the Star Wars Movies

Fiona Moore

The original Star Wars trilogy, having been made in the late 1970s and early 1980s, presents us with a cast which is overwhelmingly human, male and White, albeit with a small amount of diversity on the side of the Rebel Alliance. In this article, I will explore how Andor makes a virtue of this historical artefact, coupled with the modern preference for diverse casting, to subtly portray an Empire which is indeed multiethnic and multispecies, but in which there exists a clear hierarchy which largely excludes women and ethnic minorities from high-ranking positions and further marginalises nonhumans. Furthermore, Andor shines a critical light on the implied hierarchies of privilege within the Rebel Alliance, subtly indicating that prejudiced attitudes persist even among our supposed "heroes." I will conclude by exploring parallels to 20th- and 21st-century organisations and the problems currently faced in diversity management policy and practice. In particular, I will note that Andor can serve as a critique of superficially diverse casting in 21st-century television.

Diversity and Inclusion: Definitions and Issues

In business and management studies, the concept of diversity management refers, broadly speaking, to the idea that organisations should recruit, and promote, more people who do not fit the template of a cisgender heterosexual ethnic-majority male.[1] The rationale behind diversity management is summarised by Hellerstedt et al. as the three ‘logics’ of moral justice, business case, and power activism.[2] The moral case can be summarised as that it serves the cause of justice.[3] In terms of the business case, writers have noted how having more people from protected categories in leadership positions benefits organisations, through providing different perspectives.[4] Breda and Manning note that greater diversity can lead to greater trust,[5] though caution that this is not always the case and treating all diversity as equal is dangerous: assuming that one policy can cover the different cases of gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality and so forth is facile and can lead to inappropriate responses. Kaufman and Derry note that taking an intersectional approach, developing policies and practices which take into account the synergies and differences between different protected categories, can mitigate this.[6]

In a performing arts context, diversity management is slightly more problematic because, in the UK and elsewhere, there are exceptions to equality legislation to allow for circumstances where personal characteristics are essential to the job.[7] In other words, if a director wants to cast a Black woman in a particular role, they are under no obligation to consider auditioning performers of other ethnicities or genders. However, recent years have seen formal and informal moves to a “cast all ethnicities” policy: namely, that in cases where ethnicity and/or gender make no real difference to a character’s function, that performers of all ethnicities and/or genders should be considered for the role.[8] This provides greater visibility for performers from protected categories, and consequently a visual landscape that better represents lived realities. It also mitigates against the casting policies of earlier decades.[9]

Nonetheless, one problem which has arisen in this context is the issue of performative diversity, which hides wider structural problems. Gordon argued that the whole concept simply reproduced structures of privilege and power through shifting focus away from systematic power towards including minorities in extant capitalist structures. He argues that, by empowering some groups and undermining others, and by divorcing the whole process from underlying discourses of power, ‘Diversity management demonstrates these features of liberal racism. It encourages differences but locates unity and control in another place, always a distance away from identity.’[10] Elsewhere, he says that ‘Difference will only work as a guiding principle if it's linked to an antiracism that is explicitly antimanagerial. This means exposing the racialized science of management and developing alternatives.’ Essentially, any [diversity management] policy which fails to acknowledge and confront underlying structures of power is inherently flawed.[11] More recently, Rice, Stewart and Young describe how anti-Black prejudice persists in academic institutions due to a peer review process which ‘endorses a discourse of diversity, equity, and inclusion on one hand, yet ignores the epistemic injustices suffered by Black scholarship.’[12] They describe this as ‘performative allyship.’ Hellerstedt, Uman and Wennberg[13] similarly note that diversity management initiatives can wind up exacerbating rather than mitigating bias, creating the illusion of positive action on diversity while reinforcing extant structures of power, as do Ameri, Amoroso and Kurtzberg.[14]

Television has sometimes been accused of operating a similar kind of performative diversity.[15] Critics of The Rings of Power, for instance, Amazon Prime’s recent series of prequels to The Lord of the Rings, argue that casting non-White actors as Elves, Hobbits, and Dwarves is contrary to JRR Tolkien’s original intentions and is simply in the service of a political agenda.[16] While other critics have equally taken issue with the idea that a multiethnic cast is against the spirit of the original work,[17] it is a fair critique to question whether or not such policies do much to address underlying political structures.

This is not, however, always the case. To take a recent example, the BBC fantasy series Ghosts (2019-23) provides a good example of diverse casting, which also acknowledges systematic inequalities in the character of Kitty, a Black 18th-century noblewoman, whose arc shows how historical Black British people could be found at all levels of society, but also were confined by structures of power which disadvantaged them. Doctor Who, similarly, has reached beyond merely diversifying the casting of the central role to feature stories acknowledging and exploring the prejudices a female or Black Doctor might face (“The Witchfinders”, “Lux”) or which are set in a Global South context (“The Story and the Engine”, “Demons of the Punjab”).

Andor, as a modern Disney-supported Star Wars series, has a Hispanic lead and a diverse supporting cast. The question thus remains whether Andor is open to charges of performative diversity. I would argue, based on evidence from within the series, that Andor not only provides meaningful diversity in its cast and characters but also uses retroactive continuity in a way that exposes and challenges structural inequalities in both the fictional universe of the Empire and the real-world universe of 21st-century America. 

The Accidental DEI: Diversity in the Original Trilogy, the Prequel Trilogy, and Andor

The nature and history of the production of Star Wars, together with its relationship to contemporary casting practices, has led to an accidental narrative emerging from the Original and Prequel trilogies as regards diversity in the Empire and its predecessor regime, the Republic, and one which also doesn’t necessarily show the Rebel Alliance in a very good light. This accidental narrative provides the foundation for presenting diversity in the Empire and the Rebel Alliance in Andor.

In Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), the Imperial characters (with the arguable exception of Darth Vader) are all portrayed by White men. This is partly because all White casting was more normative in 1977 than it is today, particularly in Britain, where the studio filming took place, and partly because the Empire is characterised by an aesthetic based on the Nazis. Moreover, there are no nonhumans in their ranks (although clearly humans are not the only species in the universe). The implication one might take from the first film that all humans in this universe are White, however, is then undermined by The Empire Strikes Back (1980): specifically, the scenes on Bespin, where the leader of the settlement is Black and, while demographics still skew White, male and human, we see a much more diverse population. Bespin, it’s worth noting, is an isolated mining station, insignificant enough that Vader can intimidate its leadership without consequence. The implication shifts to suggest that the Empire is indeed diverse, but is also stratified along ethnic, gender, and species lines (the fact that nonhumans on Bespin seem confined to dangerous industrial roles also supports this interpretation).

It’s worth noting that later media, such as The Bad Batch (2021–4) and the Sequel Trilogy, took advantage of the fact that the Stormtrooper uniform is all-enclosing to provide retroactive continuity and suggest that some stormtroopers are non-White and/or female. However, this also supports the idea of a stratified Empire: that, while we might be seeing non-White and/or female Imperial agents, they are the ones at the dangerous end of the business and are rendered faceless and voiceless by their armour.

Interestingly, however, the series also implies something similar about the Rebel Alliance. In the first film, the Alliance characters are all male, White and, aside from Leia and Chewbacca, male and human. The situation has barely changed in the second film. The third film does show us a more diverse Rebel Alliance, including more aliens (particularly the Mon Calamari). While difficult to reconcile with the first two films, this does indicate that the franchise is being affected by contemporary discourses about diversity being a positive good (and possibly reacting to the fact that rival space opera Battlestar Galactica had a diverse cast, including a Black executive officer and Black and female combat pilots).

The Prequel Trilogy and the Clone Wars animated series, meanwhile, depicted a much more diverse past for the fictional society. Again, some of this is due to changes in casting practices over the intervening twenty years (as well as digital technology now being up to the task of depicting a multi-species republic): by the late 1990s, there would have had to have been a compelling narrative reason not to depict Naboo, Coruscant, etc., as ethnically heterogeneous. Furthermore, the portrayal of the Republic as galaxy-spanning and Coruscant as a bustling trade hub (and Naboo as home to more than one intelligent species) led not only to more gender and ethnic diversity, but also more aliens as both central and background characters. This, furthermore, also provides a narrative very much in keeping with what we have seen so far: that the Republic was a tolerant, liberal, diverse society which became corrupted by fascist, totalitarian elements who ultimately took over and established the Empire.

Andor thus enters the story at a point where an accidental narrative has been established about diversity in his society: that a tolerant, if not always meritocratic or entirely egalitarian, society had been taken over by one with a tacit ethnic and gender hierarchy. While this narrative partly emerges for practical reasons– the original trilogy creators being more restricted than the prequel ones in terms of their ability to depict aliens, for instance– nonetheless, it provides a consistent through-line on diversity and prejudice within the Empire and the Rebellion.  We shall now see what Andor did with that scenario. Please note that I am also not going to discuss the issue of droids, who clearly constitute a slave class but whose enslavement almost no one, whatever their political position within the Empire, appears to challenge.

The Empire, Diversity and Hierarchy

As is fairly typical for a modern streaming series, the Empire we see in Andor is diverse, in ethnic, gender and species terms. Significantly, however, this diversity is not random or even. Non-White people and women, such as Taramyn and Niya, crowd the lower echelons. Societies on the margins, such as Ferrix, are diverse, as are the low-level technicians in the Standards and Practices office; Syril Karn is evidently mixed-race, since his mother is non-White, but passing for White. The only high-level area where we see much in the way of ethnic diversity is the Imperial Senate, and there, clearly, the ambassadorial function and the fact that the Senators are all high-status people in their own right make for a relaxation of prohibitions. Significantly, the Senate is also one of the only two places in the Imperial mainstream where we see non-humans, the other being as marginal figures in the backstreets of Coruscant or Ferrix. Same-sex relationships are also marginalised, as we see through the subplot of Vel and Cinta.

Significantly, two of our main entry points to high-level Imperial politics are women: Dedra Meero and Mon Mothma. Dedra is very much a recognisable figure from a diversity management point of view: the ISB officers are almost entirely White and, other than Dedra, male. Dedra’s situation is familiar from the literature: a “token woman” in the leadership team, who has evidently had to be a better performer and more ruthless politician than her male colleagues in order to get where she is, but who, as we see in Season Two, also faces harsher consequences for failure than the men at the same level.[18] Significantly, she also helms the sensitive and risky Ghorman project, an example of the well-studied 'glass cliff' phenomenon: women and/or other protected categories are put in charge of projects with a high expectation of failure.[19]

Although less obviously, Mon Mothma’s portrayal also speaks to the problems of diversity. Chandrilan society also appears to be very White in its upper echelons, and there is also a reactionary movement (which Mon’s daughter espouses) promoting “traditional values” including the sort of teenage marriage which is currently the source of a number of Mon’s problems. Other than Mon, the powerful Chandrilans we see are all men, and Mon’s husband has a clearly ambivalent attitude toward his wife’s social power. It is also clear that Mon often struggles to be heard in Imperial politics, though how much if any of it is due to her gender is unclear. All of this provides another reason why she might be drawn to the Rebel Alliance.

The Resistance, Diversity and Hegemony

As one might expect, given the opposition, the Rebel Alliance shows rather more diversity in terms of its membership and leadership. However, Andor also makes it clear that the Alliance has also absorbed the prejudices of the society it is rebelling against. In the Aldhani storyline, for instance, Vel Sartha is the one in charge: although she is a woman, she is White and, we later learn, from a very elite social background. The two Black members of the heist team are killed (reflecting unconscious bias in the production team more than within the narrative, arguably, but nonetheless symbolically suggesting that Black bodies are more disposable than White ones even in the Rebellion), and Vel’s relationship with her Brown girlfriend, Cinta, is clearly fraught with issues about their relative privilege.

It’s also worth considering Saw Gerrera’s more radical faction of rebels. Here, as in Rogue One, they are presented as anarchic, destructive, and often working at cross purposes with more moderate factions. They are also very badly treated by those more moderate factions,. Not insignificantly, they are also the single most diverse group we see among the rebels: led by a Black man, with a more-than-token number of nonhumans, and with a high level of ethnic and gender diversity (although the gender diversity has been appreciably reduced by the time of Rogue One). The impression is that the more diverse the group, the more “anarchic” it is and the less likely it is to have the support of more mainstream factions.

The Ghorman resistance storyline is also interesting to consider. This particular subplot is one which could open the series up to criticism of following the trope that “it’s a dystopia when it’s happening to White people”, a critique often levelled at dystopian SFF which depicts White or otherwise privileged characters experiencing things normally forced on protected categories,[20] such as The Handmaid’s Tale[21] or Sterling and Steiner’s anti-colonial short story “Mozart in Mirrorshades.”[22] However, in such cases this is often the point: Atwood, for instance, deliberately wrote a dystopia in which abuses inflicted on Black and Global South women are inflicted on middle-class White American women as a way of raising awareness of these issues,[24] and Sterling and Steiner bridge the cultural gap that prevents Americans from appreciating the horrors of exploitation in the Global South by imagining a universe in which the country being exploited is 18th-century Austria.

Ghorman stands out in Andor largely because the population appear to be entirely White. Even the scenes on Chandrila contain a few non-White people (it is unclear whether they are local or visitors, but they are present). On Ghorman, the only non-White people are working for the Empire (and thus likely to be expatriates), and the only non-humans, seen briefly in the hotel lobby in “Messenger”, are clearly visitors. Given the usual diversity of casting, this has to be deliberate on the part of the showrunners. Clearly, then, a story in which a rebellion is deliberately fomented on a peaceful planet in order to give the Empire an excuse to step in and strip it of its natural resources is being deliberately set up along the lines described above: to show a real-life dystopian scenario which normally happens to people of colour, happening to White people.

However, this is in fact deliberately lampshaded in the series itself. In the episode “What a Festive Evening”, Andor and Luthen’s conversation makes it clear that Luthen himself wants a rebellion on a planet of wealth, status and comfort, in order to draw attention to their struggle, and that the sight of privileged people being crushed by Imperial forces will aid their cause. “Think about a planet like Ghorman in rebellion. A planet of wealth and status,” Luthen says, and when Andor counters, “And if it goes up in flames?” he replies, “Then it will burn so brightly.” Effectively, Luthen wants to play the scenario of “it’s dystopia when it happens to White people” to in-universe audiences, acknowledging and exploiting the ethnic and gender hierarchies within the Empire.

Andor, therefore, isn’t simply re-inserting women and non-White people back into the Star Wars narrative in order to appeal to 21st-century audience sensibilities. It is doing so in a way which points out that the Rebel Alliance is still a part of the same structure of privilege as the Empire, and that their ability to confront this is variable. 

Uncomfortable parallels: Andor and modern organizations

Andor, therefore, is not only providing audiences with a more diverse cast in line with 21st-century audience expectations and current studio casting policies. t also makes a virtue of the originals' lack of diversity and the subsequent re-diversification of the Prequels and other media, supporting the original worldbuilding that depicted a superficially diverse and inclusive Republic giving way to a fascist, hierarchical Empire. It continues to add to this, hinting at how the New Republic's failure to confront its own diversity problems laid the groundwork for the neofascist First Order a generation later.

Andor, furthermore, provides narratives “from below” for the Original Trilogy period. In the same way that some modern adaptations, such as Das Boot (2018), engage with the lack of diversity in the original text by including the narratives the author left out, so Andor shows us what life is like for women, non-White people and, to a lesser extent, non-human people, in an Empire where the films mostly only show us the lives of the White, male, human officer class. Andor therefore expands the narrative universe by providing the stories of the sort of marginalised characters left out of the original narrative, and gives us stories which assume, rather than erase, privilege and deprivation. In a media landscape dominated by imperial stories, it provides us with both no-imperial stories that center marginalized characters in non-assimilationist ways, and anti-imperial stories that center marginalized characters in stories about destroying imperialism from the margins as well as the centre. 

However, in its portrayal of the Rebellion, Andor is also providing a critique of modern liberal and left-wing organisations. The subtext to the portrayal of the Rebel Alliance is clearly that the Rebels are nonetheless subject to the same prejudices as their parent society. Furthermore, one can also infer that at least some of the Rebels’ greater diversity is down to disaffection with the Empire among the marginalised: this is clearly shown in the stories of Gorn and Taramyn in the Aldhani episodes, and may well underlie the radicalisation of more privileged characters such as Vel Sartha and Mon Mothma.

As such, Andor might make uncomfortable viewing for modern liberals: suggesting that, as recent studies have also indicated, their commitment to diversity might be underlain by more pervasive biases.[25] The all-White casting of Ghorman may be aimed at exciting the sympathies of the modern White middle-class viewer, but Luthen’s remarks about it indicate that this is also the in-universe exploitation of White privilege. Furthermore, it offers a narrative as to why the New Republic was not successful in eradicating Imperial sympathies, in parallel to the way in which the post-civil-war US made concessions to the Southern states that laid the ground for the erosion of civil rights later on.[26] Andor’s political message is thus not only about the need to resist fascism, but also about the need to consider what internal biases might be getting in the way of that resistance.

Ways Forward 

Andor’s use of diversity is thus not a performative act, nor is it simply a way of adding the stories of people marginalised by the Original Trilogy into the narrative of the Star Wars universe. Rather, the series uses the casting of different characters and supporting artists to make a wider point about the pervasiveness of gender and ethnic prejudice in organisations supposedly aimed at greater inclusivity. This point can also be read not only on the fictional institutions of the Star Wars universe, but on real-life progressive organisations as well.

Andor’s presentation of diversity within the Empire speaks to present-day experiences by showing as an Empire which centres White human men, from the perspective of the non-White, non-human and female people exploited and marginalised by the system they are in. However, it also makes it clear that the Rebels, while doing better than the Empire, also have gender, ethnic, class and species hierarchies which are an inevitable result of the Rebellion emerging from the culture of the Empire. In later stories, it is clear that the Rebellion’s attempts to build a better society do not go as far as they should in terms of challenging its inherent assumptions. By failing to dismantle the structures of power, therefore, the New Republic is inherently compromised from the time of its founding.

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[1] Avery Gordon, “The work of corporate culture: Diversity management”, Social Text, 44 (1995): pp. 3-30.

[2] Karin Hellerstedt, Timur Uman, and Karl Wennberg, “Fooled by Diversity? When diversity initiatives exacerbate rather than mitigate bias and inequality”, Academy of Management Perspectives 38, 1 (2022): pp. 23-42.

[3] Thomas Köllen, “Diversity management: A critical review and agenda for the future”, Journal of Management Inquiry, 30, 3 (2019), pp. 259-272.

[4] Amanda Bullough, Tugba Kalafatoglu, and Fiona Moore, “Research on women in international business and management: Then, now, and next”, Cross Cultural & Strategic Management, 24 (2017): 211-230; Leanne S. Son Hing, Nouran Sakr, Jessica B. Sorenson, Cailin S. Stamarski, Kiah Caniera, and Caren Colaco, “Gender inequities in the workplace: A holistic review of organizational processes and practices”, Human Resource Management Review, 33, 3 (2023): 100968; Yeongsu Anthony Kim and Maria del Carmen Triana, “Women’s representation on boards, diversity practices, and internationalization: Evidence from greenfield investment”,  International Business Review, 34, 5 (2025): 102481; 

[5] Thomas Breda and Alan Manning, Diversity and social capital within the workplace: Evidence from Britain Industrial Relations (2024), published online in advance of publication: https://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12384

[6] Laura Kaufman and Robbin Derry, “On valuing women: Advancing an intersectional theory of gender diversity in organizations”, Academy of Management Review 49, 4 (2024), pp. 775-798.

[7] EHCR (2021) Exceptions where equality law applies differently. EHCR, available from https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/equality/equality-act-2010/dismissal-redundancy-and-retirement/exceptions-where-equality-law

[8] Fiona Moore, The Robots of Death. The Black Archive vol. 43 (London: Obverse Books, 2023).

[9] Moore, The Robots of Death.

[10] Gordon, “The work of corporate culture”, p. 18.

[11] Willmott 2025

[12] Darryl B. Rice, Oscar Jerome Stewart, Tsedale Melaku, and Nicole C. J. Young, “Enough is enough: Identifying and overcoming acts of anti-Black performative allyship in the peer-review process”, Organization, 32, 2 (2025), pp. 191-219.

[13] Hellerstedt et al. “Fooled by Diversity?”

[14] Ameri, Amoroso and Kurtzberg (2021)

[15] Bianca Gonzalez‐Sobrino, Emma González‐Lesser, and Matthew W. Hughey, “On‐demand diversity? The meanings of racial diversity in Netflix productions”, In D. G. Embrick, S. M. Collins, & M. S. Dodson (Eds.), Challenging the status quo: Diversity, democracy, and equality in the 21st century, pp. 321–344, (London: Brill, 2018).

[16]  Meghna Amin, Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power stars stress diverse cast of actors is ‘not tokenization’. Metro 3 August 2022, available from https://metro.co.uk/2022/08/03/lord-of-the-rings-rings-of-power-stars-stress-diverse-cast-is-not-tokenization-17121094/

[17] Ask Middle-Earth (2014) Racism And Middle-earth. Available from https://askmiddleearth.tumbler.com.

[18] See Leanne S. Son Hing, Nouran Sakr, Jessica B. Sorenson, Cailin S. Stamarski, Kiah Caniera, and Caren Colaco, “Gender inequities in the workplace: A holistic review of organizational processes and practices”, Human Resource Management Review, 33, 3 (2023): 100968.

[19] Brian G. M. Main and Ian Gregory-Smith, “Symbolic management and the glass cliff: Evidence from the boardroom careers of female and male directors”, British Journal of Management, 29 (2018), pp. 136–155.

[21] Noah Berlatsky, Why Sci-Fi keeps imagining the subjugation of white people, The Atlantic, April 25 2014, available from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/why-sci-fi-keeps-imagining-the-enslavement-of-white-people/361173/

[22] Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (London: McClelland and Stewart, 1985).

[23] Bruce Sterling and Lewis Steiner, “Mozart in mirrorshades”, Omni (September 1985).

[24] Anonymous (2019) Margaret Atwood on the real-life events that inspired The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments. www.penguin.com, available from https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-testaments-real-life-inspiration

[25] See Rice et al “Enough is enough.”

[26] Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America (Oxford: OUP, 2020).