While the William Shatner era of Star Trek isn't exactly the first thing that springs to mind as a predecessor of the "It Gets Better" anti-bullying movement, Buzzfeed's got an excerpt from the advice pages of a 1968 teen magazine called Fave displays Leonard Nimoy's sensitivity to the plight of one particular young woman. What would Spock do? she asks. And damn if he doesn't answer her perfectly.
Dear Mr. Spock,
I am not very good at writing letters so I will make this short. I know you are half Vulcan and half human and you have suffered because of this. My mother is Negro and my father is white and I am told this makes me a half-breed. In some ways I am persecuted even more than the Negro. The Negroes don't like me because I don't look like them. The white kids don't like me because I don't exactly look like one of them either. I guess I'll never have any friends.
F.C.
Los Angeles, Calif.
Some excerpts from his answer:
Most of the Vulcan kids didn't like Spock because he was half human. So they wouldn't include him in all the things they did. He was very lonely and no one understood him. And Spock was heartbroken because he wasn't popular. But it was only the need for popularity that was ruining his happiness.
Spock learned he could save himself from letting prejudice get him down. He could do this by really understanding himself and knowing his own value as a person. He found he was equal to anyone who might try to put him down—equal in his own unique way.
When you think of people who are truly great and who have improved the world, you can see that they are people who have realized they didn't need popularity because they knew they had something special to offer the world, no matter how small that offering seemed. And they offered it and it was accepted with peace and love. It's all in having the patience to find out what you yourself have to offer the world that's really uniquely yours.
Guhh. Weeping?
DISCUSSION
Holy shit, this is great. I know everyone is tired of hearing stories on the Internet that begin with "I have Asperger's syndrome", but I have Asperger's syndrome, and the "Star Trek" remake was released very shortly after my engagement, so we went to see if for my fiancee's birthday; I'd always been kind of uncomfortable talking to her about my AS because I didn't feel like I was really qualified, even if I had it, but while we were watching it, she told me that Spock, who'd always been her favorite character, reminded her of me, and that I shouldn't be ashamed. So yeah, that was my first thought when I read this; it's remarkable how much fictional characters can mean.