EPISODE 395: The Friendship Enterprise

All of this.

EPISODE 374: Away Mission (Part 21)

The new captain of the latest starship Enterprise is a pansexual woman in her 50s, and her first officer is a bisexual WOC grandmother in her 50s. That's pretty cool. That's pretty amazing.

10TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL: No. 5

Deep Space Nine 2x5, “Cardassians”

But I think another answer is, Because Miles proves himself open to being corrected. He isn’t too proud or defensive (or bogged down by toxic masculinity) to listen when people call him out on bigoted bullshit: he listens. Keiko is with him not because he messes up so bad sometimes, but because when he does mess up, he stops, and thinks, and behaves better in the future.

I also appreciate the comments from @firespirited and @onsomekindofstartrek on how the ethnicities of the actors of Keiko and Miles influence this scene, so be sure to check those out in the notes y’all!

And 2) O’Brien saying this is also a bit of character continuity - when the Cardassians were introduced in TNG’s “The Wounded,” it also introduced that the Federation and the Cardassians had been involved in a war against one another, O’Brien being on the ground during what is commonly referred to as “the Setlik III massacre,” where Cardassians, believing the Federation colony to be a military outpost, wound up slaughtering a population of civilians. Brutally. O’Brien’s captain at the time lost his entire family in it. O’Brien later admits to a Cardassian officer “I hate what I became because of you” in response to what he went through that day - when he had to kill a Cardassian soldier, the first time he’d ever killed. 

It’s one thing for Miles to let stray comments like this slip in privet conversation lightyears away from the nearest person effected by it. As has been pointed out, Keiko would understand this comes from a place of pain and trauma.

O'Brien does and should still hate the Cardassian military, and the Obsidian Order, but he realizes the average Cardassian citizen is not at fault for Setlik III, is not at fault for the occupation of Bajor, is not to blame for the war between Cardassia and the Federation which took place, I believe, around the beginning of TNG. Cardassia is a fascist militaristic dictatorship, and the citizens suffer just as much, though in different ways, as those Cardassia has oppressed and waged war with.

O'Brien’s newfound understanding can be seen in his interactions with Gilora Rejal; he’s not openly hostile, as he is whenever faced with Dukat or even Garak, because she’s a civilian scientist, and engineer like he is, just trying to get the bits and bobs of the station to function in order to achieve a goal. Hes willing to listen to her suggestions, and work alongside her (when she lets him). Even the awkward scene where it’s revealed he’s been flirting unknowingly with her is a huge step for him, because he’s not outright disgusted like he might have been in TNG.

Miles has PTSD-type issues related to Cardassians. He was in the Federation-Cardassian War. That captain he served under then had his family killed by them. He’s going to have some realistic bigoted generalizations. But Keiko calls him out on it, and she does so in a way that’s not calling him a bad person, because he’s not. She knows about his issues.