"Lost Rebels": deleted scenes

Interesting to see that the idea of including female and non-human Rebel pilots was not a new concept with the recent Star Wars movies, but it's just that these scenes ended up on the cutting room floor with the Original Trilogy. I kinda feel sorry for the ILM guys who must've worked on those alien costumes though (as well as the actors who would've had to act inside them!) only to have their scenes be edited out. Also interesting to see that General Nadine had a more prominent role. I can understand why these scenes were deleted - as cool as they may have been, they aren't as crucial to the central plot and were probably deleted to save on time. It happens in every movie (except for most of the Jar Jar Binks scene in Episode I which should have been deleted... like his entire presence on Tatooine ).

But it's interesting to note that they had always intended to portray the Rebel Alliance with greater diversity than what we ended up with. And to be fair, RotJ did absolutely give us greater diversity among the Rebels - we had another woman with Mon Mothma (and as the supreme leader of the Rebels no less), and aside from Lando we did have other non-White human Rebels as pilots, commandos etc. during the space battle and on Endor. Jedi also gave us Mon Calamari and at least one Sullustan in the form of Nien Nunb (Lando's co-pilot on the Falcon), and Nien Nunb also gave us greater linguistic diversity as another non-Basic speaking Rebel (aside from Chewbacca).

I've always found it to be interesting idea that the Rebel Alliance would have greater diversity than the Empire. We only ever see White males on the side of the Empire. Okay, granted that we never see a Stormtrooper without their helmet, so there could be Stormies of other diversities or even female Stormtroopers (they wear the same armour), but we never hear or see any of them - whereas in The Force Awakens we see FN-2187 without his helmet, and we can hear the voices of at least two female Stormtroopers (Captain Phasma and one generic Stormtrooper on Starkiller Base). But still, we never see any non-humans on the side of the Empire or First Order, which does visually portray some level of racism on the side of the Empire/First Order. This contrasts with the Rebellion and Resistance who appear to be far more inclusive and accepting of different races, not only humans.

And of course, we know that the Jedi order was also inclusive of different races... although so are the Sith, as Darth Maul was a Zabrak, not a human. And Palpatine did have non-human allies, such as Mas Amedda. But anyway, the general theme in the films is inclusion & diversity = good, exclusiveness and racism = bad.