Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because - what with trolls and dwarfs and so on - speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how in the Discworld, issues of race (racism) are overshadowed by a more complex form of discrimination based on species.
In this quote, Terry Pratchett uses humor and fantasy to explore themes of prejudice and societal division. On the Discworld, where various species coexist, the focus shifts from traditional racial divides to the more intricate dynamics of speciesism, suggesting that different forms of discrimination can arise in various contexts. This implies that even in a world where racial harmony exists, new divisions can emerge, forcing a re-evaluation of what society perceives as important issues.
In practice
During a discussion about social issues in literature, one might quote this to illustrate how fantasy can reflect real-world problems.
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
It is the hour of pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.
The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.
"Civilization" has been thrust upon me since the days of the reservations, and it has not added one whit to my sense of justice, to my reverence for the rights of life, to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity, or to my faith in Wakan Tanka, God of the Lakotas.
If I be worthy, I live for my God to teach the heathen, even though they may despise me.
My language and my sensibility are yearning to admit a kind of religious or transcendent dimension. But then there's the reality: there's no Heaven, no afterlife of the sort we were promised, and no personal God.
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