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Was ‘Game of Thrones’ racially insensitive in season finale?

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HBO’s “Game of Thrones” is arguably TV’s hottest series of the moment, with the hoopla surrounding its “Red Wedding” sequence and the continuing fascination by viewers with its fantastic worlds and complex plots detailing the fight for power.

But the series has also come under quiet fire in the last three seasons for a noticeable lack of cultural diversity. All the major and regularly seen characters are white.

Characters of color are rarely seen, and then mostly in brief appearances. The most pronounced presence until the season finale of characters with dark skin were the Dothraki race, composed of warriors who seem to have few characteristics beyond a taste for crassness and brutality, including toward women.

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The issue of the racial landscape of “Game of Thrones” has again been sparked by the third season finale, “Mhysa,” in which the mother of dragons, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), frees the Yunkai slave population from captivity.

The episode’s final scenes showed thousands of slaves lifting the blue-eyed and blond Daenerys high on their shoulders to the heavens and declaring her “Mhysa,” which is “mother” in the Yunkai language.

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The sight of dark-skinned people declaring the ivory-skinned Daenerys as their savior was discomforting to many viewers, with some wondering, “Where did this show find so many people of color all of a sudden?”

What do you think? Has “Game of Thrones” been insensitive when it comes to race?”

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