In a recent column for the Washington Post, Stanford Ph.D. student Jeffrey Chen made the case that the Star Wars franchise “reinforces our prejudices” through its soundtrack.

Stanford doctoral student Jeffrey Chen published a column in the Washington Post to make the case that the Star Wars film franchise is racist.

“[I]f we take a moment to think about it, George Lucas’s galaxy is, and has always been, far, far away from being an original or an inclusive creation,” Chen writes in the column. It suffers from “Orientalizing” stereotypes — “patronizing tropes that represent an imagined East, or the Orient, as inferior to the rational, heroic West.”

It’s not just the film that is problematic, according to Chen. The doctoral student argues that the main problem with the franchise is John Williams’ celebrated score. Chen claims that the score takes European influences when the protagonists are on screen and Chinese, Indian, and Middle Eastern influences when antagonists are on screen.