Yes, The Empire in Star Wars is racist

They’re specifically Human Supremacists, if you want to get technical about it.

The Jedi Order was diverse. It had many aliens in it, as we see watching the Prequels in particular. The Clone Army we see in Episode II is cloned from a human and there’s no diversity at all – the Clone Troopers from which the Clone Wars takes its name are, in fact, all clones of one human man, the bounty hunter Jango Fett. (Even Jango’s ‘son’, Boba Fett, is a clone of Jango, just not aged to adulthood as the other Clone Troopers are.) When Order 66 comes down, the Clone Troopers execute their pre-programmed orders and kill the Jedi, thus nearly wiping out the Jedi Order and allowing Palpatine to claim supreme dictatorial power unopposed.

It’s repeatedly stated and shown that the Empire is indeed racist. No, they don’t care about the superficial differences between human races (although they are all most British because, well, Americans cast English people as villains a lot) but they deliberately allow the Wookies to be sold into slavery, and the pre-Empire scenes of Coruscant with aliens in a wide variety of roles are absent from the Empire’s day to day life. In the first of his Star Wars novels, Timothy Zahn even notes that Grand Admiral Thrawn is a rare exception to the Empire’s anti-alien bias (and since Thrawn is canon again, one assumes his origins are as well).

In short, the Empire isn’t White Supremacist only because in the far away galaxy of Star Wars, humans have actual alien beings to be racist at. Yes, the Empire is racist, as well as fascist. If you root for them, you’re rooting for racism and fascism. If you’re boycotting a movie because it deliberately portrays them as what they’ve always been (racist, fascist, evil) and you’re offended that the villains of a movie are shown as racist and fascist, maybe examine why that bothers you.

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