| 1 | [[quoteright:320:[[{{Series/Friends}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/friendscast_103.jpg]]]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:320: Can you remember what color the chick and the duck were?]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | %% This is how the quote formatting is suppose to look: One indent, then dialog, then two indents, then the source. Don't mess with it. |
| 5 | ->''"You know, people were whiter back then."'' |
| 6 | -->-- '''Joel''', ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' |
| 7 | |
| 8 | You're watching your favorite sitcom -- it's fluff, but it's harmless fluff, right? And you're laughing at the latest antics of the cast, when all of a sudden it hits you -- "Are there any Black people in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity?" |
| 9 | |
| 10 | You've just run across a program guilty of Monochrome Casting. The melanin content of the actors simply doesn't vary much at all. Almost all of these programs consist of either an all-Black or all-white cast (shows with all-Asian or Hispanic casts are usually set and produced in countries where they're by far the dominant ethnic/racial group). |
| 11 | |
| 12 | It is close to becoming a DiscreditedTrope -- a product of the ''Series/LeaveItToBeaver'' era -- but it still holds more sway than people at large realize. Most often, this trope is seen in sitcoms, where it is used to help target a single demographic. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | Sometimes you'll get a TokenMinority or TokenWhite appearing in a walk-on role in the show; if he's a Black man on a white show, then he's probably there for a VerySpecialEpisode about racism. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | Now, some shows are set in [[BlackVikings environments where it might even seem forced to have any sort of ethnic diversity]]; this trope doesn't apply to these programs so much. For instance, the rarified world of the superwealthy that often dominates in {{Soap Opera}}s really doesn't have many Black people or Latin Americans (except as servants, and that might be a little ''too'' real); likewise, the Chicago public-housing projects displayed in ''Series/GoodTimes'' were pretty much all-Black by the time the show aired in the '70s. Similarly, Europe was almost all-white until the past two or so centuries (and many parts still are, especially in the East), and there are small towns in rural America that just don't have much in terms of diversity. In some countries, such as Japan or South Korea, ethnic homogeneity is practically state policy. It's when a show exists in an environment like New York or London, [[note]]which started becoming really racially diverse since the 1960s[[/note]] where diversity would be almost mandatory, that they can be guilty of monochrome casting. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | Historically, Monochrome Casting was (at least in part) often the fault of ExecutiveMeddling, either overt or covert. Before about 1965, it was standard for television stations and movie chains operating in the southern US to edit movies and TV shows to remove non-stereotypical African-American characters. Maids and criminals were fine, scientists and soldiers were not. If an African-American character was so intrinsic to the show that he or she couldn't be edited out, the show or movie simply wouldn't be shown in the South. [[note]]A strong contender for Crowning Moment of WTF came in May 1970, when a Mississippi state commission voted that the state's public networks would not air ''Series/SesameStreet'', stating that "Mississippi was not yet ready" for the show's integrated cast.[[/note]] This naturally would cut into profits, so producers tended to make the entire cast white. One of the first shows to [[DefiedTrope challenge this]] was ''Series/HogansHeroes'', whose producers cast a Black actor as Hogan's second-in-command/camp genius specifically to make it impossible for Southern stations to edit the character out. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | However, sometimes Monochrome Casting is more understandable in older works, due simply to demographic changes. In 1940, for example, only 1 in 10 Americans were nonwhite; now it's between 1 in 4 and 1 in 3, depending on who counts as "nonwhite." So, statistically speaking, one could show nine white characters in a 1940 film or 2 or 3 white characters now and maintain plausible deniability. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | Many older films and shows and whatnot actually ''didn't'' have this trope in their day, if only [[ValuesDissonance because there were many more social factors dividing people than just race]]. A story from the past showing, say, rich people and poor people socializing freely, or Catholics and Protestants getting along, or Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans actually not wanting to kill each other (as they did in countless Mob movies), is in a way ''not'' this trope, at least if the diversity was the work's main theme and there was no reason for it to be more diverse still. Where Monochrome Casting is most noticeable is in works where the characters are homogeneous in ''every'' way: race, national origin, income level, political and cultural values. Either that, or they just ''seem'' so similar that any differences among them effectively don't matter. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | Contrast PeopleOfHairColor. Compare HumansAreWhite, a similar phenomenon in unrealistic works. Contrast the FiveTokenBand, where it seems the writers were trying too hard in the opposite direction. Compare to WhiteMaleLead in which, while the cast is ethnically diverse, the main character and AudienceSurrogate is still white. May overlap with PopCultureIsolation. Compare PlentyOfBlondes. Compare ChromosomeCasting, the equivalent of this trope in sex (when characters of only one sex appear in a work). See also MoreDiverseSequel if the installment is successful enough to make a sequel or spinoff with a diverse cast. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | [[noreallife]] |
| 27 | ---- |
| 28 | !!Examples: |
| 29 | |
| 30 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 31 | |
| 32 | [[folder:Anime and Manga]] |
| 33 | * In general, most anime and manga have predominantly Japanese casts, [[{{Mukokuseki}} whether the characters really look Japanese or not]]. If a non-Japanese character does show up, that character will likely be a GorgeousGaijin of European descent with other ethnicities and races rarely making an appearance. |
| 34 | * Urd and her mother Hild from ''Manga/AhMyGoddess'' are examples of brown-skinned major characters, although neither is human. In a mild aversion, some characters describe Urd as Indian early on in the manga. Given that the manga largely averts the strange gamut of hair colours in anime, it's likely that in universe Belldandy probably looks Caucasian with a Japanese boyfriend in Keiichi. |
| 35 | * The later seasons of ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' added in several Black ninja-like Killer Bee and Omoi. |
| 36 | * ''Anime/BloodPlus'' has a Japanese protagonist but takes place across several different countries. Two members of the heroine's supporting cast are white, while another is Black. Additionally, the lead antagonist's [[TheDragon Dragon]] is a Black man. |
| 37 | * ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'' turns this trope completely upside down. The core cast is mostly European, but there are a number of exceptions. The show's universe draws heavily from World War II Europe, heavily mixed with a conflict-ridden counterpart to the Middle East. Because of this, true-to-life racial and cultural tensions are depicted on a very frequent basis. As for specific cast, Paninya and Jerso are both Black, and a number of characters of varying degrees of importance come from the fictional nations of Ishval and Xing, which are [[FantasyCounterpartCulture stand-ins]] for the Middle East and China respectively. |
| 38 | * ''Anime/AfroSamurai'' is another aversion. It doesn't hurt that it was made to cater to an American audience first. |
| 39 | * ''Manga/Eyeshield21'' had a recurring team of American rivals, which were fairly diverse. The character Patrick "Panther" Spencer was a Black teen with a fairly large role. |
| 40 | * Of note is Seinen manga ''Manga/MeAndTheDevilBlues'', a story chronicling the life of blues musician Music/RobertJohnson had he actually won his talent from the devil, as some of the more popular rumors surrounding his mysterious rise to prominence dictated. The protagonist and many of the supporting characters are strikingly African American, with a range of body and facial types rarely seen any where, let alone manga or anime, while the lancer and most of the rest of the cast are Caucasian. |
| 41 | * In ''Anime/{{Meganebu}}'', most of the members of the student council are [[ButNotTooForeign only half-Japanese]] (Brazilian, French, British, and German). |
| 42 | * ''Anime/CodeGeass'' averts this, being set in a worldwide conflict between [[LaResistance The Black Knights]] trying liberate Area 11 (once known as Japan) from [[TheEmpire Britannia]], the main villain of the series. Plus there's China later on. This means there are plenty of characters ranging from Japanese, Chinese, and Britannian. Though, Britannians tend to all be white except for AmbiguouslyBrown Villetta Nu. |
| 43 | * ''Anime/{{Kuromukuro}}'' is very diverse, especially for a {{mecha}} anime that takes place in Japan ''and'' draws upon traditional Japanese culture. Featured among the Japanese character are a French, a Brit, an American, a Chinese, an Italian, a German, a Polish, two BridgeBunnies consisting of a Latina and a European, and one character who is [[ButNotTooForeign half-Japanese/half-Spanish]]. |
| 44 | [[/folder]] |
| 45 | |
| 46 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 47 | * ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes: A product of the 50s when including ethnic characters probably never crossed the creators' minds, though there ''were'' several non-white characters: Brainiac 5 was green, Shadow Lass was blue, and the alien-looking Chameleon Boy was orange. Compounded when they tried to fix it in the 70s by adding a Black hero, Tyroc, who came from an island with only Black people. That appeared on Earth only intermittently. And ''all'' the Black people in the world had gone to this island, and they were all racist, openly crying their hatred of whites. |
| 48 | ** Ferro Lad was supposed to be Black under his armor, but you couldn't tell. When writer Creator/JimShooter wasn't allowed to reveal this, he gave the character a HeroicSacrifice. Shadow Lass is also rumored to have been intended as Black; she ended up being blue instead. |
| 49 | * ''ComicBook/BirdsOfPrey'' fell into this, as while the team has had several minority "guest operatives" who have shown up from time to time, the core cast has historically been entirely white. Even the writer, Creator/GailSimone, said she thought it was a [[http://gailsimone.tumblr.com/post/1579618568/sufferingsappho-ceebee-eebee-having-someone problem]]. She mentioned that at various points, she unsuccessfully tried to get Comicbook/{{Vixen}}, [[ComicBook/{{Icon}} Rocket]] (both Black), [[ComicBook/Batgirl2000 Cassandra Cain]] (half-Asian) and [[ComicBook/TheQuestion Renee Montoya]] (Hispanic) added to the team. In the case of Cassandra, Simone even claims she had written up Cass' debut issue [[ExecutiveMeddling before editorial informed her that she would not be able to use her]]. The 2011 relaunch was the first time in the title's history that a minority woman (Japanese heroine ComicBook/{{Katana}}) was featured as part of the core cast. The character Strix (an African American member of the [[ComicBook/NightOfTheOwls Court of Owls]]) was later added to the team. |
| 50 | * The original five ComicBook/XMen (Cyclops, Beast, Angel, Jean Grey and Iceman) consisted of all-white superheroes. Furthermore, all ''additional'' members of Stan Lee's run (Mimic, Morph, Havok and Polaris) were white. This looks like EarlyInstallmentWeirdness nowadays, given that one of the X-Men's (and the numerous other X-teams) defining traits since the '70s is [[MultinationalTeam just how diverse it is]]. With the large cast, there's a hero for ''everyone''. When the O5 X-Men reunited under the ComicBook/XFactor banner in 1986, the utter lack of diversity made it stick out like a sore thumb. |
| 51 | * ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'': The non-white population of New York City seems to consist of... Robbie. (Okay, sometimes we see his wife and son, too.) They've had other minority characters, but none of them stood the test of time. To avoid this in adaptations, ''[[WesternAnimation/TheSpectacularSpiderMan Spectacular]]'' and ''[[Film/SpiderManHomecoming Homecoming]]'' [[RaceLift race-lifted]] half the cast, and ''{{WesternAnimation/Ultimate|SpiderMan2012}}'' uses mostly minority heroes like ComicBook/LukeCage and ComicBook/WhiteTiger as part of the team. |
| 52 | * At New York Comic-Con 2012, Rick Remender self-deprecatingly stated that the line-up of his ''ComicBook/UncannyAvengers'' book was "Crackerfest 2012" in regards to the lack of minorities on the team. Japanese hero Sunfire was added to the cast in the second story arc in order to offset this a little. |
| 53 | * Bryan Lee O'Malley [[http://io9.com/scott-pilgrim-author-says-it-sucks-that-the-movie-was-575876991 actually criticized]] ''himself'' over the lack of diversity in his ''ComicBook/ScottPilgrim'' comics, even stating that he was appalled by just how white the [[Film/ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld movie adaptation]] was. He's said that his follow-up work, ''Seconds'', was intentionally written with a more diverse cast. |
| 54 | * Creator/MarvelComics has actually mocked ''[[SelfDeprecation themselves]]'' over this trope in the past. The 1991 ''Marvel Year In Review'' special contained a "Men of ComicBook/TheAvengers" gallery (ComicBook/CaptainAmerica, ComicBook/{{Hawkeye}}, [[ComicBook/AntMan Hank Pym]], ComicBook/{{Captain Marvel|MarvelComics}}, ComicBook/{{Quasar}}, etc.) that [[OnlySixFaces used the same generic drawing of a nondescript blue-eyed blonde for every character]]. |
| 55 | * For a long time, the Bash Street Kids in ''ComicBook/TheBeano'' (and, indeed, the ''Beano'' in general once they got rid of all the racist stereotype characters but didn't replace them with anything). In the 21st century, they've tried to add more strips with BAME characters, and in the 2020s, several of these characters were added to the Kids ([[AffirmativeActionGirl mostly girls]] since the strip had also been subject to TheSmurfettePrinciple). |
| 56 | [[/folder]] |
| 57 | |
| 58 | [[folder:Comic Strips]] |
| 59 | * ''ComicStrip/NineChickweedLane'' takes place in a version of Manhattan that is populated only by white people. Even characters explicitly identified as being from a non-white country (Xiulan and her family are from China and Fernanda is from Argentina) still have the exact same skin tone as the white characters. |
| 60 | * Every character in ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' is white. While not as noticeable as some examples due to the strips being mostly black and white, the color strips don't show any non-Caucasian skin tones amongst the main cast. Based on the tree shown behind Calvin's house (mostly broadleafs) along with it having hot summers and cold, snowy winters, it appears that he lives in a suburb in the Midwest. And since the cast is just his parents, the girl next door to him, and some kids and adults at his elementary school, it's not completely unrealistic, although {{Imagine Spot}}s are also only filled with white people. |
| 61 | [[/folder]] |
| 62 | |
| 63 | [[folder:Films -- Animated]] |
| 64 | * Many of Disney's earlier animated films often tend to have all-white human characters due to the settings often being European countries. In fact, it's much easier to list examples where ''none'' of the human characters are white: those being ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967'', ''{{WesternAnimation/Aladdin}}'', ''{{WesternAnimation/Mulan}}'', ''WesternAnimation/TheEmperorsNewGroove'', ''WesternAnimation/BrotherBear'', ''{{WesternAnimation/Moana}}'', ''WesternAnimation/RayaandtheLastDragon'', and ''{{WesternAnimation/Encanto}}''. |
| 65 | * A Pixar example of the trope would be ''{{WesternAnimation/Coco}}'', where all of the characters are Hispanic. |
| 66 | [[/folder]] |
| 67 | |
| 68 | [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]] |
| 69 | * ''Film/NottingHill'' has a curious lack of Black people in crowd shots despite being set in Notting Hill neighborhood, which has enough of a Black population that the Notting Hill Carnival is a major annual event which is known for being a celebration of Black culture in the United Kingdom. At least one comedian of color joked that the film would win the UsefulNotes/AcademyAward for Best Special Effects for removing all the Black people from Notting Hill. Screenwriter Richard Curtis responded by casting the guy as a DJ in ''Film/LoveActually''. |
| 70 | * ''Franchise/StarWars'': in the first film of the franchise, ''Film/ANewHope'', all the visible actors on screen were white--only Creator/JamesEarlJones as the voice of Darth Vader wasn't. Lucas repeatedly defended himself, claiming he had auditioned nonwhites for some of the major roles (including a Black actor for Han Solo and a Japanese actor for Obi-Wan) but just happened to end up with only whites. In any case, the later films all featured nonwhites in major roles, most notably Lando Calrissian and Jango Fett. |
| 71 | ** In a later interview the daughter of the Japanese actor said that her father turned down both the role of Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. |
| 72 | * ''Film/{{Amelie}}'' is set in Montmartre, an area of Paris with a large immigrant population, but the cast, with the exception of Jamel Debouze, is almost exclusively white. The director responded to such criticism by pointing out the role of Debouze and the diversity displayed amongst a ''selection of photographs'' which play an important role in the plot. |
| 73 | * The film BasedOnAnAdviceBook ''Film/HesJustNotThatIntoYou'', which takes place in Baltimore, has already been lambasted by viewers due to the entire cast being strictly white, sans one SassyBlackWoman making an offhand remark on a park bench. |
| 74 | * One of the things dating Creator/JohnHughes films is that none of the leads are minorities (a few of the actors are, but the untrained eye would never notice), and that the closest thing to a non-Caucasian character with lines was [[EthnicScrappy Long Duk Dong]]. Hughes, however, based the fictious suburb of Shermer, where most of his movies set on his hometown, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northbrook,_Illinois Northbrook]], [[JustifiedTrope which is 90% white]]. |
| 75 | ** Everyone's white in ''Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff'' except for a few incidental characters. The high school you could maybe chalk up to districting, but its strains WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief a little when ''downtown Chicago'' apparently just has a token black guy. |
| 76 | * Everyone in the domed city of ''Film/LogansRun'' is white. Memorably lampshaded by Creator/RichardPryor: |
| 77 | -->"They had a movie of the future called ''Logan's Run''. There ain't no niggers in it. I said, 'Well, white folks ain't planning for us to be here.'" |
| 78 | * The 1993 film ''Film/TheMeteorMan'' has an entirely Black cast save for one white mobster. |
| 79 | * Pretty much everyone in ''The Romantics'' is white. |
| 80 | * Creator/WoodyAllen films used to be notorious for presenting a very non-diverse version of New York. |
| 81 | * ''Film/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'' has a contest for kids all over the world and yet all five of the winners are white and either American or European. Granted, [[Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory the 1964 source novel]] and [[Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory 1971 film version]] went the same way, but the 2005 version makes it clear that the ticket contest is worldwide, so the lack of racial diversity is more conspicuous. Creator/TimBurton admitted that his team had considered doing a RaceLift for some of the characters in the 2005 version, but since the kids (other than Charlie) are ''major brats'' with negative personality traits, the idea was dropped to avoid UnfortunateImplications. Tim Burton's concerns turned out to be accurate when the [[Theatre/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory 2013 stage musical]] created racial controversy by making Violet and her parents black. It should be noted the book was an enforced example as well: Dahl had originally wanted to make Charlie black, but the editors forced him to change it. |
| 82 | * ''Film/TheTreeOfLife''. Granted, it is set in a small middle-class suburban town in the 1950s, providing some justification. |
| 83 | * ''Film/TheArtist'', set [[DeliberateValuesDissonance in a time period]] in Hollywood where most Black characters were in {{Blackface}}. |
| 84 | * In spite of Creator/GeneRoddenberry's good intentions, many ''Franchise/StarTrek'' films were fairly monochromatic. The most notable example occurs in ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'', where the ethnically diverse superhumans from "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS1E22SpaceSeed}} Space Seed]]" became generically European. |
| 85 | * The 1972 "horror" film ''Film/NightOfTheLepus'' has only one Black character (Dr. Leopold), and amazingly, [[BlackDudeDiesFirst he doesn't die.]] |
| 86 | * Nearly every character is Hispanic/Latino in ''Film/ParanormalActivityTheMarkedOnes''. This is in contrast with the rest of the [[Film/ParanormalActivity franchise]], where pretty much everyone is white bearing exceptions like the the housekeeper in the second movie. |
| 87 | * Nearly everyone in ''Film/TheHustler1961'' is Caucasian -- the only exception is a mute Black man at Ames' pool hall who sweeps the floor. |
| 88 | * ''Film/DickTracy'' (1990): For a film featuring tons of characters and set in 1930s Chicago (by then already a multiracial city), there is exactly one visible minority in ''Dick Tracy'': a Chinese shop owner whom Tracy saves from a holdup. There's also the radio report about the (presumably Black) shoeshiner who is murdered at the very beginning of the film, but we never actually see him, so we can only speculate. |
| 89 | * ''Film/TheWiz'', being set first in Harlem and then in a Harlem-ized version of Oz, contains absolutely no non-Black characters. They exist in this movie's universe (note the JewishMother comment); they just never make it onto the screen. |
| 90 | * Everyone from the central ''Asian'' nation of Kazakhstan in the thriller ''Film/AirForceOne'' is white. This isn't the first time for that particular nation either. Apparently the makers of the film thought Kazakhs look like Russians (when they're more akin to East Asian). Russians are a minority. |
| 91 | * ''Film/ComingToAmerica'', where virtually the entire cast is Black with the exception of Louis Anderson, Eddie Murphy playing a Jewish guy in white face, a handful of very minor characters, and a memorable cameo of Randolph and Mortimer Duke from ''Film/TradingPlaces.'' |
| 92 | * The town ''Film/{{Footloose}}'' is set in is exclusively inhabited by white characters, though this isn't unusual, as Utah is not the most diverse of states (according to the United States Census in 2010, nearly 90% of its inhabitants are white, and that kind of disparity is not likely to have changed in a mere 30 years), and rural Utah (as opposed to Salt Lake City) is closer to 100% white. Averted in the remake where the town is shown to have a fairly large Black population and the characters of Rusty and Woody are [[RaceLift now played by]] a Puerto Rican girl and an African-American man respectively. |
| 93 | * UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood was fairly monochrome for its time, but one weird inversion is the all-Black film. As a result of segregation, African-Americans could not be truly protagonists in a film with other white characters, so this niche genre was on a few occasions invested in partly to broadcast talented African-American singers and musicians. |
| 94 | ** ''Film/{{Hallelujah}}'' by Creator/KingVidor, a 1929 musical about a family of poor cotton farmers, was the first film in this genre. This film shows African-Americans as sharecroppers with urban African-American in big city ghettoes, so while white characters aren't acknowledged in the film, one can assume that they exist since the portrayal of African-Americans is largely realistic. |
| 95 | ** ''Film/CabinInTheSky'' by Creator/VincenteMinnelli, made in 1943 is a lot more fantastic and it portrays a separate Heaven and Hell and it's depicted more or less as an AlternateUniverse. It features Music/DukeEllington and his Band, Music/LouisArmstrong in TheCameo alongside Lean Horne and Ethel Waters. |
| 96 | ** In the same vein as ''Film/CabinInTheSky'', ''Film/StormyWeather'' features an all Black cast and [[TheCameo cameos]] of the era's best performers; Music/CabCalloway, Ada Brown, and Fats Waller. |
| 97 | * ''{{Film/Whiplash}}'', has no (named) Black characters despite being a movie about jazz. This is probably an artistic choice, as the characters having no cultural connection to the music further drives home the pointlessness of the suffering they put themselves and others through to get good at it. |
| 98 | * ''{{Film/Scream}}'' has no non-white characters in the entire film (except a reporter in one brief scene played by Lisa Canning), but this was sort of addressed in [[Film/Scream2 the sequel]], with Creator/JadaPinkett and Creator/OmarEpps's characters as [[spoiler:the opening victims]], and Pinkett's character discussing how horror films typically ignore African American points of view. The film also features Hallie, Sydney's TokenBlackFriend, [[spoiler:who also bites it]], and Joel, Gale's new camera assistant, [[spoiler:who lives]]. ''Film/Scream3'''s only Black character was Tyson, while ''Film/Scream4'' goes back to an exclusively white cast with the exception of a [[BadCopIncompetentCop bumbling cop]] played by Creator/AnthonyAnderson. The fifth and sixth films however combat this by focusing on two Latina sisters, and having twins who are the biracial children of a character from the third. |
| 99 | * ''Film/RoboCop1987'': The film is set in a futuristic version of Detroit that is surprisingly white, with only DaChief and one of the minor crooks being black. [[Film/Robocop2 The]] [[Film/Robocop3 sequels]] are just as bad. |
| 100 | * ''Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse'': |
| 101 | ** A frequent complaint, even from many fans of the MCU, is the abundance of {{White Male Lead}}s. It's an issue carried from the comics, as most main Marvel characters ''are'' white in the source material and the MCU only [[RaceLift race-lifted]] minor characters. The first ''Film/TheAvengers2012'' team, despite being gathered by Nick Fury to save the entire world, is all white. The closest thing to a non-white superhero was Hulk turning green. With War Machine and The Falcon joining at the end of ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron'', along with other members leaving, the team is noticeably more diverse in the group shot at the end of the film. Ultimately, Marvel released 17 films over 10 years before they started having ones with a non-white or female lead (''Black Panther'' for the former, and both ''Ant-Man and the Wasp'' and ''Captain Marvel'' for the latter); though they've made a push for more diversity in the years since. |
| 102 | ** {{Justified}} in ''Film/{{Black Panther|2018}}'', which is set in Africa and accordingly has an overwhelmingly Black cast with only a handful of white actors (notably Creator/MartinFreeman and Creator/AndySerkis). It's explained that Wakanda is a very isolationist country that doesn't normally allow foreigners inside so it makes sense that most of the characters are Black. |
| 103 | ** Likewise, ''Film/ShangChiAndTheLegendOfTheTenRings'' is the MCU's first movie to revolve around a Chinese/Asian lead (ComicBook/ShangChi) and features a [[https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/marvel-studios-shang-chi-legend-ten-rings-98-percent-asian-cast-kevin-feige/ 98 percent Chinese/Asian cast]]. One benefit to this trope is that [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools it helps to mitigate]] the YellowPeril implications of the BigBad, the Mandarin (who has traditionally been depicted as the ArchEnemy of ComicBook/IronMan, whose own adventures largely feature a white supporting cast, [[TokenBlackFriend except for]] ComicBook/WarMachine). The only non-East-Asian actors of note in the cast are ''Film/CreedII'''s Creator/FlorianMunteanu (Razorfist), [[spoiler:Creator/BenKingsley[[note]]Who is of mixed Gujurati, White British, and Russian-Jewish heritage[[/note]] (reprising his role as the former fake Mandarin from ''Film/IronMan3''), and Creator/MarkRuffalo and Creator/BrieLarson reprising their respective roles as Bruce Banner and Captain Marvel (the latter two in TheStinger) rather than in the film proper]]. |
| 104 | * ''Film/RedSparrow'': Nate's boss Trish Forsyth is the only noticeably brown named character in the movie (played by Indian-American Creator/SakinaJaffrey). {{Justified}} since the film takes place mostly in Russia and Hungary, both of which are mostly monoracial countries, and if the CIA had sent a person of color they would have stuck out like a sore thumb. |
| 105 | * ''Film/FullmetalAlchemist2017'' is a strange example, with an entirely Japanese cast to play European characters; presumably because it would be hard to find an entire cast of European actors who are fluent in Japanese. The whole Ishval story arc, which is the main source of racial tension in the story, is also absent from the film, as well as the characters from the [[FantasyCounterpartCulture China stand-in]] Xing and any dark-skinned characters. |
| 106 | * ''Film/TheManWhoCouldWorkMiracles'': Understandable for a film set among middle class England in the 1930s. However, towards the end of the film, Fotheringay uses his powers to summon all of the world's leaders--temporal and spiritual--to his palace. Logically this should have included a diverse range of races, but only white faces are visible, even in the group shots. |
| 107 | * ''Film/TheCraft'' is set in Los Angeles, a notably diverse area, and yet Rochelle is the only non-white character in the cast (and the character was written to be white, only getting a RaceLift when Creator/RachelTrue lobbied for the part). A DeletedScene clarifies that it happens to be an all-white neighborhood, and Rochelle is literally the only Black girl there - and being ostracised because of her race is why she's friends with Nancy in the first place. |
| 108 | * ''Film/JackAndDiane'': All of the characters are White. This is rather unrealistic, as it's set in a big American city. |
| 109 | * Despite being set in the diverse Bay Area, ''Film/AlwaysBeMyMaybe'' has a cast entirely made up of Asian-Americans except for the mixed race Creator/MichelleButeau as Sasha's best friend. |
| 110 | * The ''Franchise/{{Halloween}}'' franchise very rarely features non-white characters (the [[Film/Halloween1978 original film]] doesn't feature a single one), which is somewhat justified by its suburban Illinois setting. Apparently franchise executive producer Moustapha Akkad, who was from Syria, upheld this trope because he mistakenly assumed there were no non-white people living in that state. The biggest exceptions are Mrs. Alves (Gloria Gifford) from ''[[Film/HalloweenII1981 Halloween II]]'' (playing a character originally written as an elderly white woman), Ronny (LL Cool J) from ''Film/HalloweenH20TwentyYearsLater'', Freddie (Busta Rhymes), Rudy (Sean Patrick Thomas), and Nora (Creator/TyraBanks) from ''Film/HalloweenResurrection'', Ismael (Creator/DannyTrejo) and Joe Grizzly (Ken Foree) from ''[[Film/Halloween2007 Rob Zombie's Halloween]]'', Nurse Daniels (Creator/OctaviaSpencer) in ''[[Film/HalloweenII2009 Rob Zombie's Halloween II]]'', and Julian (Jibrail Nantambu) and Sheriff Barker (Omar Dorsey) in ''Film/Halloween2018'' and ''Film/HalloweenKills''. |
| 111 | * ''Film/{{Pleasantville}}'': Not a single ethnic minority resident in Pleasantville. Not one. Not even a FunnyForeigner. 50s sitcoms were in fact lily-white, but one couldn't be faulted for thinking a movie so concerned with racism and culture change could have found a way around this. |
| 112 | * ''Film/DontBreathe'': While the cast isn't very large, it's a bit surprising that every character is white given that Detroit is only 14% white. In ''Film/DontBreathe2'', there is a white Hispanic supporting character and a black bit character without any lines. Otherwise the entire cast is white, non-Hispanic (except Rocci Williams, a British actor of Romani heritage playing FakeAmerican). |
| 113 | * All of ''Film/JasonsLyric'''s casts are black, including the background figures. |
| 114 | * ''Film/WhiteWolves'': The first and second films have all white casts while the third and fourth each have a TokenMinority character: a Filipino teenager and a BadassNative pilot, respectively. |
| 115 | * Invoked InUniverse in ''Film/CSATheConfederateStatesOfAmerica'': as this is an AlternateUniverse where the Confederacy won the Civil War and slavery was never abolished, the powers that be naturally would only hire white people to act in their movies, and just make use of {{Blackface}} to portray slaves. |
| 116 | * ''Film/TheCabinInTheWoods'' exploits this as a satire on 2000s horror movies, where the college kids selected for the ritual are all white, save for Holden (who is still very light-skinned); acknowledging that 2000s slashers would often have one TokenMinority in there. The lab by contrast has far more people of colour working there, although even then Truman is the only one with a major speaking part. |
| 117 | * ''Film/{{Dune|1984}}'' has an all-white cast, which can come off as pretty awkward regarding the Fremen who don't even look sun-tanned. The [[Film/Dune2021 Denis]] [[Film/DunePartTwo Villeneuve]] films have avoided such issue since. |
| 118 | * ''Film/{{Midway 2019}}'': Understandable since Japan is pretty monoethnic[[note]]The Imperial Japanese armed forces ''did'' have Chinese and Korean conscripts, but these likely wouldn't have been featured in any of the naval battles and, for whatever it's worth, probably wouldn't have been visually distinguishable from ethnic Japanese by most American viewers anyway.[[/note]] and the US military was segregated at the time. The film unfortunately left out its only real opportunity for a HistoricalDomainCharacter of color: USN messman [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Miller Doris Miller]], who jumped on a machine gun when the USS ''West Virginia'' was torpedoed at anchor in Pearl Harbor and was credited with downing two Japanese aircraft and then risked his life to rescue several other sailors, earning a Navy Cross. Miller did not take part in any of the other battles depicted in the film. |
| 119 | * ''Film/TheRetreat2021'': The whole cast of the film is white. |
| 120 | * ''Film/TheNorthman'': Like the previous two films directed by Creator/RobertEggers, this movie features an all-white cast of characters. This is not surprising considering that it is set in Scandinavia and Iceland in UsefulNotes/TheVikingAge. |
| 121 | [[/folder]] |
| 122 | |
| 123 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 124 | * According to [[http://www.bloggerbeware.com/2008/07/r-e-t-r-o-s-p-e-c-t-find-out-what-it.html this post]] on ''Blog/BloggerBeware'', in all of the original series of ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' novels, there were only 20 explicitly non-white characters, of whom 45% were Egyptians (in novels about Mummies, no less). There are however, more characters who are implied to be minorities but [[AmbiguouslyBrown it's never specifically called out]]. |
| 125 | * Virtually everything by Creator/BretEastonEllis. This is kind of the point, however. |
| 126 | * ''Literature/HowNotToWriteANovel'' called this "The Country Club", noting that unless one's novel happens to be set in rural Sweden, the reader may start to get the undesired impression that some form of ethnic cleansing has taken place. |
| 127 | * ''Literature/AnansiBoys'' takes it for granted that the characters are Black by default (their African ancestry is a major plot point), to the point that race is only specified for the TokenWhite. (Reportedly, a proposed film version fell through because the executives wanted to have [[RaceLift a predominantly white cast]], which Creator/NeilGaiman vetoed because he thought that would be ridiculous.) |
| 128 | * In the Literature/{{Discworld}}, it is established early on that Howondaland is the FantasyCounterpartCulture for Africa. Ankh-Morpork is implicitly a fantasy version of London and has corresponding ethnic communities, although only two incidental characters are clearly stated to be black: policewoman Precious Jolson and her father, who runs a catering business. |
| 129 | * ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'' has very few important characters of color. There are only three named campers who are non-white (Charles Beckendorf, Chris Rodriguez, and Ethan Nakamura), and two of them die in the final book. Percy's teams throughout the series incorporate only white people with the exception of one AmbiguouslyBrown character who dies at the end of that mission. The film adaptation had to RaceLift Grover because the film would otherwise be dominated by whites. Creator/RickRiordan eventually noticed this though; the Seven of ''Literature/TheHeroesOfOlympus'' consist of two white boys, one white girl, a Latino boy, a Native American girl, an Asian boy, and a black girl, and the cast in general is much more varied. |
| 130 | ** This was rectified in the Disney Plus series, in which Luke and Annabeth are race lifted to be played by black and mixed-race actors. |
| 131 | * ''Literature/HarryPotter'' has only a few characters of color and all of them are minor - Angelina Johnson, Blaize Zabini, Lee Jordan and Dean Thomas are the only Black students, and Dean was in fact supposed to have a larger role that just went to Neville, and so his only function is to date Ginny briefly before she ends up with Harry. Cho Chang (East Asian) and Parvati Patil (South Asian) function as {{Romantic False Lead}}s for Harry but both lose any story relevance by the sixth book, and Parvati's twin sister Padma only appears in a handful of chapters. Lavender Brown was seemingly portrayed as Black in the first few films, where she was just a featured extra, but her expanded role in the ''Half Blood Prince'' movie saw the white Jessie Cave playing her. Kingsley Shackelbolt is the only named Black person in the Order of the Phoenix, who at least gets to be made Minister for Magic at the end, but never has a story of his own. JK Rowling backtracked when ''Theatre/HarryPotterAndTheCursedChild'' cast a Black actress as Hermione (and therefore her daughter as well), insisting that she'd never specified Hermione's race, aside from one line describing "Hermione's white face" in reference to her getting scared, but of course she'd been played by a white actress in the films and drawn as white in all the illustrations and tie-in media before the adaptations. Though it should be pointed out that this number of characters of color was not really low, considering the population composition of Britain at the time. |
| 132 | [[/folder]] |
| 133 | |
| 134 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 135 | * For the first few years of Creator/{{MTV}}'s existence, they infamously only played music videos of white musicians, claiming that they only played rock and pop (which excluded the then rising hip-hop scene, as well as ghettoizing R&B and the like). Which didn't really explain why they resisted playing acts like Music/MichaelJackson whose music was more pop than R&B; even Music/DavidBowie criticized the channel's exclusionary nature during an interview. It wasn't until ''Music/{{Thriller}}'''s overwhelming popularity that they caved. |
| 136 | * ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' is frequently mentioned for the rarity of minority characters who appear. {{Showrunner}} Creator/LarryDavid would winkingly own up to it in his later series ''Series/CurbYourEnthusiasm'' in the episode "Affirmative Action", in which a Black woman brings up that there were no Black people on ''Seinfeld''. |
| 137 | * ''Series/{{Friends}}'' rarely has any significant minority characters. Especially odd as it's set in Manhattan, one of the most diverse places in the world (in 2000: 45% white, 27% Hispanic, 17% Black, 9% Asian, and many mixed-race people) -- yet not only are all the main cast white, but so are almost all the recurring characters (Gunther, Mr Heckles, ugly naked guy, the super, and virtually all love interests, bosses, coworkers, and acquaintances). Even the chick and the duck are white! Like ''Seinfeld'', the show is usually cited as one of the most prominent and memorable examples of this trope (Aisha Tyler got a nine-episode arc in the last season as Ross's girlfriend Charlie, mainly due to media criticism over this trope). |
| 138 | * 'Series/GilmoreGirls'' has only a few non-White characters, even when Rory goes to Yale. |
| 139 | * ''Series/GoodTimes'' was one of the first Black sitcoms of its time, having premiered a decade after segregation was abolished in the real world. The show wanted to take full advantage of being able to feature Black characters by going all out, having the series take place in a predominantly Black neighborhood in the city of Chicago, which is known to have a very high Black population, even back then. Despite the show taking place after the abolition of segregation, it was still prevalent that the world wasn't quite integrated yet, as big changes like that truly take time before we can see them take effect. That being said, little to none of the characters in the show were white aside from an extremely scarce number of [[TokenWhite minor and one-off characters]] who would drop by for an episode or two. The only white characters who were really noteworthy in the grand scheme of things were only white because the plot specifically called for them to be white, as they appeared in [[VerySpecialEpisode very special episodes]] that dealt with race. These characters being two blonde-haired white girls named [[OneSteveLimit Cindy]]. [[note]]These characters being Cindy Bradford from "''Thelma's Scholarship''" and Cindy Crebbins from "''Michael's Decision''".[[/note]] |
| 140 | * ''Series/ADifferentWorld'' is a [[SpinOff spin-off]] of ''Series/TheCosbyShow'' about Denise going to an all-Black college with her [[TokenWhite one white friend]], Maggie Lauten, who was intended to be the {{Deuteragonist}} of the series. However, she was written off the show after one season, due to her actress, [[Creator/MarisaTomei Marisa Tomei]], quitting television to pursue a career in film instead. Her role was never replaced by another white actor and the show [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome continued on for 5 more seasons without her]] or any other white or non-Black main or even supporting characters. |
| 141 | * AMC's ''Series/TheWalkingDead2010'' focuses on a group of zombie apocalypse survivors around Atlanta, Georgia... a city with the largest Black population in the United States. The diversity on the show by Season Two is one Asian and one Black man, with another black man being a notable one-shot character. Diversity increased somewhat over the seasons, and the one-shot black character came back to become a main character. However, there are still fewer black people than you would expect in a post-apocalyptic South. |
| 142 | * ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'' has an all-white primary cast, but a few recurring minority characters (cab driver Ranjit and Barney's gay Black brother). In the seventh season both Barney and Robin's love interests were minorities, but [[RomanticFalseLEad they are now gone for good.]] Ted's lack of variety in the girls he dates may be a necessity of the series' central gimmick: given we've seen the kids and they both look white, a woman of color is probably not going to be the mother. |
| 143 | * ''Series/TheClass2006'', with ''Friends'' creator David Crane as an executive producer, was highly criticized for having an all-white cast, especially considering Philadelphia has a very large Black population. |
| 144 | * ''Series/SanfordAndSon'' is a show with an almost entirely Black cast, with the only non-Black characters being an [[TokenMinority Asian character]] [[PunnyName named Ah Chew]], [[ButtMonkey who is constantly being mocked, belittled, and insulted]] by Fred, specifically because of his race and a Puerto Rican next-door neighbor, who is also strongly disliked by Fred solely for being Hispanic. |
| 145 | ** The only other non-Black character is Officer Hopkins, who, you guessed it, is constantly being insulted by Fred because of his race. |
| 146 | * For a good while, the WB's nightly lineup consisted almost entirely of shows with this kind of casting, particularly of Black families, like ''Series/TheParentHood'' and ''Series/SisterSister''. Averted however as many of these shows had white recurring characters or guest stars even if they were not regulars. |
| 147 | * Many classic sitcoms of TheFifties such as ''Series/LeaveItToBeaver'' and ''Series/TheHoneymooners'' were notably white-washed portrayals of American life. In the former case, Kim Hamilton was the only African-American cast member to appear in any of its 234 episodes. She played a maid in "The Parking Attendants". However, with ''Series/LeaveItToBeaver'', it may be a JustifiedTrope. The setting of ''Series/LeaveItToBeaver'' is the small midwestern city Mayfield in the 1950s, it would have had very few visible minorities. |
| 148 | * ''Series/ILoveLucy'' is an interesting case since, during this time, Desi Arnaz and the actors playing his friends and relatives from Cuba were not seen as non-whites, like they would be today, but more along the lines of a FunnyForeigner troupe. Only two minor Black characters appeared in the show's six-season run, and neither in the show's primary New York setting: a porter on the train that the characters take back home to New York after their time in Hollywood, and a background character in the dream sequence episode "Lucy Goes to Scotland". |
| 149 | * ''Series/WhatsHappening'' featured an almost entirely Black cast with the most prominent white characters being Earl Barnett, Jr. and his dad, who only appeared in 10 episodes of the show's 65 episode run. |
| 150 | * The only white characrers from ''Series/LincolnHeights'' were tokens, who, while sort of signifiant to the story, were only [[SatelliteCharacter sidekicks or love interests]] to one of the Black characters. |
| 151 | * The only two white characters to appear in multiple episodes of the otherwise all-Black show, ''Series/SmartGuy'' were a [[SatelliteCharacter satellite character]] to Yvette, and a [[ButtMonkey butt monkey]] who was always being made fun of for his whiteness. |
| 152 | * Creator/{{UPN}} was famous for having entire blocks of programming with overwhelmingly Black casts. But most of those shows were made to be an alternative to the all-white shows. Noticeably, several of the shows on the network included a main cast member that was not Black, if not a TokenWhite including ''Series/EverybodyHatesChris'', ''Series/TheParkers'', ''Series/Eve2003'' and later seasons of ''Series/OneOnOne''. |
| 153 | * During the brief period where university life at "UC Sunnydale" was shown on ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', there were almost no Asians, even though the actual University of California has over 40%. You can count the Black characters on ''Buffy'' with both hands, and only one for the characters that survive. Lampshaded in real life at Dragoncon 2012, where Creator/JamesMarsters bluntly stated that he'd never in his life encountered a real town that was as white as Sunnydale. |
| 154 | * Buffy's sister show, ''Series/{{Angel}}'', also had a curious lack of minorities, especially since it took place in Los Angeles. Gunn and Gavin Park were the only real major non-white characters, and there didn't seem to be very many Hispanics, despite Los Angeles having a large Hispanic population. The showrunners finally produced a single episode in the final season, "[[Recap/AngelS05E06TheCautionaryTaleOfNumeroCinco The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco]]", which heavily involved the city's Hispanic community, but it ended up just drawing attention to the lacuna in the series as a whole. |
| 155 | * The third major Creator/JossWhedon show, ''Series/{{Firefly}}'', came in for a very specific kind of criticism due to the conflict between the casting and the world-building. Although there were Black and Hispanic actors in the regular cast and among the guest characters, there was only one East Asian actor in a speaking role in the entire show (one of the brothel prostitutes in "[[Recap/FireflyE13HeartOfGold Heart of Gold]]", although so minor a character that many viewers didn't notice her). The problem with this was that the show was set in a future where supposedly the USA and China had merged to create a hybrid dominant culture for humanity, but while there were lots of Chinese inscriptions and badly-pronounced expletives, there were puzzlingly few Chinese-looking people. |
| 156 | * ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'': |
| 157 | ** Parodied in a skit where a Black waiter refused to serve Creator/AshtonKutcher after the actor grudgingly admitted that there were no major minority characters in ''Series/That70sShow''. Which actually isn't true - one of the main characters, Fez, was from a minority, though it was never determined which one (his actor is Latino). And, in any case, small-town Wisconsin in the 70s was pretty white anyway. Hyde was revealed as ([[FakeMixedRace supposedly]]) being half Black, and his Black biological father also counted (along with his half-sister Angie, who really was played by a mixed-race actress, in contrast to Hyde). |
| 158 | ** ''SNL'' itself is an example of this trope depending on the season. The show has received some criticism for not having a diverse cast. The majority of its cast members have been white and the show has rarely had more than one non-white cast member at a time, and never had any fully Asian cast members (Rob Schneider and Fred Armisen were both a quarter Asian) until Bowen Yang was promoted from the writing staff in 2019, the show's ''45th'' season. The show especially came under fire for not having any Black female cast members between Maya Rudolph's departure in 2007 and 2013, a fact that was highlighted when Creator/KerryWashington guest starred (the cold open featured her playing Michelle Obama, Oprah, and Music/{{Beyonce}}). SNL attempted to remedy this by holding a casting call in 2013 specifically for Black women, and in 2014 hired Black woman Sasheer Zamata. |
| 159 | ** Creator/SteveMartin opened up the 40th anniversary show by saying that it was like being at "a high school reunion — a high school that is almost all white." |
| 160 | ** Rival ''Series/MadTV1995'' made fun of this fact by having guest star and former SNL regular Creator/MartinShort think he was on his was on his old show as a joke and mistake all the Black cast members, including the woman, for Creator/TimMeadows. |
| 161 | ** Alluded to in the Creator/QuintaBrunson-starring sketch "Drug Dealers", where one of the drug dealers claims their cocaine is so white, it's like a Creator/NoahBaumbach movie. |
| 162 | * Out of 101 episodes of ''Series/TheWayansBros'', only [[TokenWhite one white character]] appeared in more than one episode, and that was [[UnfortunateNames White Mike]], who appeared in 6 episodes across the first two seasons before [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome disappearing from the show completely]] for the rest of its 5-season-long run. |
| 163 | * In ''Series/ICarly'', T-Bo and Principal Franklin are the only recurring non-white characters, and the only Asian recurring characters appeared twice at most, but they were portrayed as irritating and unlikable. It was once {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in a fanfic with the line: "Seattle has the diversity of a corn field!" (In case you were wondering, the real-world Seattle has a 30.5% minority population as of the 2010 Census). |
| 164 | * ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' tried very hard to avoid monochrome casting, in line with Creator/GeneRoddenberry's views on race becoming a non-issue in Earth's future. This required deliberate effort on the part of the production staff, as, even in the mid-1960s, the network production system tended to fill all spots for extras with generic, physically fit white males (age 25 to 45) unless otherwise specified. As production values slipped in the second and third seasons of the series, crewmen and civilians fell back on the generic white male Hollywood stockpile. Of course, the most notable aversion of that era was Lieutenant Uhura, whose noteworthiness as a ranking Black officer was so notable that Dr Martin Luther King Jr. himself convinced Creator/NichelleNichols to stay on the show in later seasons specifically to avert this trope. |
| 165 | * Monochromatic casting applied to all segments of American television before the 1970s. When Bill Cosby first appeared on ''Series/TheTonightShow'' in the 1960s, doing his stand-up comedy act, the only makeup on hand at NBC was a base used previously for Lena Horne, who is so much paler than usual for American Blacks that she used to be attacked as a "mulatto" by hostile white (and, occasionally, Black) hecklers (Horne had Black, indigenous and white ancestry). Cosby was so pale on screen that night ("Live in Black & white!") his family thought something had been done to him or that he was ill. |
| 166 | * ''Series/{{Earthsea}}'', the Sci-Fi Channel adaptation of Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin's Literature/{{Earthsea}} novels. Le Guin intentionally created a fantasy world where a variety of dark-skinned people make up the majority of the populace (she even makes a point of distinguishing between the different shades of brown), with the only white people being barbarians... and the movie starred a bunch of white people and a MagicalNegro. Le Guin had some [[https://slate.com/culture/2004/12/ursula-k-le-guin-on-the-tv-earthsea.html choice things]] to say about the production. |
| 167 | * The US version of ''Series/{{Queer as Folk|US}}'' is somewhat disappointing since the show is about gay life in UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}}, which has a healthy Black population, yet one has to keep one's eye's peeled to even see non-white ''extras.'' Justin does have a TokenBlackFriend, but she's so light-skinned that you wouldn't notice until she mentions it herself. |
| 168 | * ''Series/{{Veep}}'' had one Black actress, Creator/SufeBradshaw, who played a secretary, despite being filmed in one of the Blackest cities in America, Baltimore, and set in the Blackest city in America, Washington, DC. Although the show never outright says what political party the characters belong to, they’re clearly Democrats, a party that’s about 60% white. A Democratic administration would, in all likelihood, have a more diverse staff. This was slightly rectified in season 4, when Sam Richardson, playing a campaign aide, was added to the cast. |
| 169 | * ''Series/MadTV1995'': |
| 170 | ** Parodied with the sketch "Pretty White Kids With Problems." It aired when ''Series/DawsonsCreek'' was at its prime. A different sketch called "Devon's Creek" was ''Dawson'' with all-Black cast members. Problem is, because the entire writing staff, production crew, and executive board were white, the lines sounded like every Black comedian stereotype of white people. |
| 171 | ** Another sketch spoofed ''Friends'', featuring a Black girl as Ross' blind date, which shocks the entire gang. The narration states that this was done due to "a direct order from the United States Supreme Court". |
| 172 | * At the very beginning of ''Series/TheWestWing'', all the main characters were cast as white. When the NAACP criticized the show, the show's creators agreed with them -- so they revived the character of Charlie Young (who was cut from the pilot somewhere between script and screen) and introduced him in the third episode. The characters on the show actually lampshade the situation by being seriously concerned with how it will look for the one visible Black staff member to be the President's errand boy. This episode also introduces John Amos as the Black Admiral Percy Fitzwallace Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and would go on to add several Black Congresspeople and a Black National Security Advisor. Fitzwallace also assured Leo that how long is they were treating Charlie right he didn't see a problem with his job. |
| 173 | * ''Series/HomeImprovement,'' ostensibly takes place in Detroit, with is only about 14% white in the city proper. However, the main cast is entirely white, and there are very few minorities visible. Given that Tim seems to live in an upper-middle-class suburb of Detroit, this is somewhat less unrealistic, as white flight has made the suburbs much more white than downtown. For example, Ann Arbor is 67% white. Even if the show remained entirely in the suburbs, however, the region should be around 1/4 black. |
| 174 | * ''Series/BeverlyHills90210'', so much so Aaron Spelling said he regretted it. |
| 175 | ** Similarly seen in the spin-off ''Series/MelrosePlace'', which had one Black character during its first season who quickly vanished due to lack of storyline. |
| 176 | ** Even though Aaron had passed by the time it came out, the sequel series fixed this featuring a Black and Arab (even though he's played by a Hispanic) in the main cast and an Indian recurring character. |
| 177 | * ''Series/DawsonsCreek''. The High School principal and his daughter are the only Black people, even in the Boston episodes. There's also Bodie, the Black boyfriend of Bessie, who she has a child with, so the writers ''did'' include an interracial relationship and biracial kid - but ironically he's a mostly off-screen character that almost never actually appears on the series, making this trope played straight after all. |
| 178 | * Despite ''Series/{{Moesha}}'' taking place in Los Angeles, the only non-Black characters who weren't just background characters were Marco, a Mexican who appeared in 4 episodes, Haley, a Caucasian who appeared in 5 episodes, and Brenda, a Caucasian who was thrown into 4 episodes of the final season. |
| 179 | * The only White characters from ''Series/MyWifeAndKids'' were Dr. Klieger and Rachel [=McNamara=], who only appeared in a collective 11 episodes before [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome falling off the face of the earth]] after Season 2. |
| 180 | * ''Series/EastEnders'' - Sweet Baby Jesus. The show takes place in one of the most ethnically diverse parts of one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world and somehow manages to be 90 percent white. Worse yet, this is a fairly recent development. When the show started in 1985, the area's demographics were roughly the same and you could count the non-white actors on one hand. It's like the producers hadn't visited the area since the Fifties.[[note]]They probably hadn't. The [=BBC=] remains a tough employer to get into if you aren't ethnically white and socio-economically ''at least'' middle-class. People who get [=BBC=] staff jobs in production and management aspire to live in ''better'' parts of London and wouldn't be seen dead in an area like "Walford". The issue here isn't so much one of race, as one of social class and Establishment values. Why do you think so many of its BritComs centre on nice middle-class white families living in nice sought-after areas?[[/note]] (Heck, ''Series/CallTheMidwife'', which actually ''is'' set in the Fifties in the same part of London, might have had more minority guest appearances on average.) |
| 181 | * ''Series/TheBachelor''/''The Bachelorette'' is like this, with only white people (with the occasional light-skinned Hispanic or Asian) on the show. And there's absolutely ''no'' excuse for this, given that there are twenty-plus contestants every season. The problem, is that the bachelor, and bachelorette in question is almost always white. And unfortunately Interracial Dating is still kinda taboo in RealLife (unlike in tv/film). The bachelor, and bachelorette may also have specified the ethnicity of the contestants. A lawsuit was filed by two African-American men who claim that they auditioned for the show and were not given equal audition time solely because of their race. ''The Bachelorette'' finally remedied this in 2017 with a Black Bachelorette (who ended up with a white man), and they milked the publicity from that for all it was worth. |
| 182 | * ''Series/LaverneAndShirley'' takes place in 1950s Milwaukee which was in the middle of a massive influx of migrant Black workers from the south, most of whom came to work at Breweries like the one where the titular characters were employed. |
| 183 | * In ''Series/NoahsArc'', almost everyone any of the characters interacts with is either Black or latino. You can count the number of white people seen throughout the series on one hand. |
| 184 | * While the show did have a few Black characters in the past, ''Series/AsTheWorldTurns''' large cast was all white by the time it went off the air. |
| 185 | ** This has been a major problem with most [[SoapOpera soap operas]]. Ironically, this might be a JustifiedTrope, as most are set in wealthy white-bread suburbs. However, ''Series/TheBoldAndTheBeautiful'' is set in the melting pot of Los Angeles but until recently had a cast almost completely devoid of minorities, and the few who were present often fell into patronizing ModelMinority roles (local cop, guard &c.) who were often relegated to the background--yet another problem often seen on soaps. |
| 186 | ** The first major Black character on the show was not even an American, but an adopted African orphan and is of [[CousinOliver cousin-oliverish]] significance. |
| 187 | ** The first regular Black member joined the family in 2008, when a young man reunites with his white, blonde mother, who abandoned him as a teenager. It is also a clear case of [[FakeMixedRace fake mixed race casting]]. |
| 188 | * ''Series/{{Neighbours}}'' is frequently guilty of this, and [[http://perfectblend.net/comment/racism.htm its attempts at rectifying the situation have rarely made things better.]] |
| 189 | ** They eventually added the Kapoors, but only as a result of active campaigning from British fans who desired more diversity. Unfortunately the entire Kapoor family were PutOnABus after only a year on Ramsay Street. Sachin Joab (Ajay) [[http://www.digitalspy.com.au/soaps/s14/neighbours/interviews/a505631/neighbours-sachin-joab-on-low-key-exit-diversity-on-screen-more.html has called the producers out on the lack of multiculturalism in the show.]] |
| 190 | * This is the standard for Australian soaps - ''Series/HomeAndAway'' and ''Series/PackedToTheRafters'' are two more prominent examples, although unlike ''Neighbours'', they aren't set in Australia's second most diverse city (Melbourne). |
| 191 | * A kids'-soap example of this is ''Series/BlueWaterHigh'', which is set in [[UsefulNotes/{{Sydney}} Australia's most diverse city]], albeit a coastal areas that could be upward of 90% white. In its first season every significant character was white, with a blonde German exchange student as a minority. The later two seasons each had a TokenMinority in the main cast ([[Series/PowerRangersRPM 'Red Ranger']] played one of the protagonists in S3). Although about a fifth of Sydney's population is Asian, no Asian Australians appeared in the main cast. |
| 192 | * You could reasonably argue that ''Series/MidsomerMurders'' is a justified example, being set in a well-off part of rural England, which is inhabited by mainly white English people. However, when the producer of the show stated with astonishing bluntness in an interview with the ''Magazine/RadioTimes'' that the lack of diversity of the show was due to his view of it being a "bastion of Englishness", and that his view stemmed from being "politically incorrect", he was temporarily forced to step down from his position by the producing company. He eventually chose to voluntarily resign, and the very next series put a British Asian actor in a main role. |
| 193 | * ''Series/{{Frasier}}'': Although the show's lack of black characters is somewhat fitting for Seattle, given that the Black population of Seattle is very small and highly concentrated in an area far from the characters' affluent hangouts[[note]]The Winton family who live on the floor above - but the mother and son are atypical, with the latter being biracial too.[[/note]] the show does drop the ball when it comes to Asians, who do make up a significant percentage of Seattle's population (about 1/8th) but are largely absent from the series.[[note]]Frasier once inadvertently burns down an Asian newsagent's kiosk, and in one episode he flirts with an obviously Far Eastern potential girlfriend (he fails miserably) but that's it. In over 200 episodes.[[/note]] |
| 194 | * ''Series/SexAndTheCity'' was also set in an unrealistically white version of New York City. Out of the parade of boyfriends and lovers the girls had over the course of six seasons, the non-white ones can be counted on maybe one hand. Reportedly, Cynthia Nixon complained to the producers about this for ''years'', until they finally threw her a bone by casting Blair Underwood as Miranda's onscreen lover. The close-but-not-a-direct-prequel series ''Series/TheCarrieDiaries,'' actually averts this a lot better than the original show did. It has led to a lot of people joking that Carrie Bradshaw became increasingly racist as she got older. |
| 195 | * The HBO series ''Series/{{Girls}}'' has gotten backlash over this, especially since it was touted and marketed as a supposedly progressive comedy and takes place in New York, one of the most ethnically diverse cities on the planet. The show's creator Lena Dunham has since apologized and promised to add some women of color to the cast for the series' second season. In the second season premiere, the main character Hannah dates a Black man named Sandy (Creator/DonaldGlover). |
| 196 | * A minor media controversy erupted after Shonda Rhimes from ''Series/GreysAnatomy'' criticized ''Series/{{Bunheads}}'' over this. The dismissive response from the show's creator [[DiggingYourselfDeeper certainly hasn't helped matters either]]... |
| 197 | * The popular British PanelGame ''Series/{{QI}}'' was notoriously both monochrome and mono-gendered in its casting choices for much of its run and by the end of its tenth season had a grand total of five appearances by people who weren't white. (Meera Syal in "Aquatic Animals", Reginald D. Hunter in "Fashion" and "Jungles", Shappi Khorsandi in "Journalism", and Trevor Noah in "Killers"). Later seasons did some work to rectify this, making Nish Kumar and Romesh Ranganathan frequent guests and also opening up for guests who were less known to the target audience such as Anuvab Pal and Daliso Chaponda. |
| 198 | * ''Series/AmericasTestKitchen'': With a name like that for a ''public TV show'', you would think that non-white chefs would have been cast. Not so. |
| 199 | * ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'': Aside from Theresa and her family, everyone is at least half-white. Considering they live in New York, this is a little strange. |
| 200 | * ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' is usually racially diverse with its casting, but in ''Series/PowerRangersJungleFury'', all the rangers except for one (the Asian Blue Ranger) were white. So far, it's the only season to do this. |
| 201 | ** ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'' just ''barely'' avoided this; Scott (Red Ranger) was the only non-white on the main team (he's Black), but both of the SixthRanger characters were Asian. That being said, it's still one of the least racially diverse seasons. |
| 202 | ** ''Series/PowerRangersSamurai'' is weird. While it has 2 hispanic rangers, one Asian, one Black, and 3 white, 2 of the white rangers, Jayden and his sister Lauren, have the last name Shiba (this is because Samurai was a ''very'' close adaptation of its ''Sentai'' source material, ''Series/SamuraiSentaiShinkenger'', where the original characters had that surname), signaling that they're descended from a Japanese family. In fact, the opening narration states that the villains and the Rangers' powers come from ancient Japan (again, a leftover from the ''Sentai''). This could mean that 4 of the other 5 Rangers (Antonio got his powers himself) are of Japanese descent as well, but it's never stated. The fact that Jayden and Lauren aren't at least part-Japanese stuck out to some people. In fact, the show, even over 26 years later, has yet to have an Asian red ranger for some reason. It ''is'' possible that they're descended from someone who was adopted into their family, since their father is shown in a flashback and is white as well, but that's never stated either. |
| 203 | ** Something weird happened with ''Series/PowerRangersNinjaSteel''. The characters are of different races, and not all of the actors are New Zealanders, but they all have roughly the same complexion. A last-minute actor replacement is partially responsible - Calvin was originally to be played by [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/powerrangers/images/7/74/NSt-Chantz.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160919064608 Chantz Simpson.]] |
| 204 | * ''Series/OneTreeHill'' is somewhat seen as this. Although from the beginning, they have had Black male characters and even had one in the opening credits by season four, there were no ''female'' Black characters unless they were only in the background with little to no lines. There was an episode where Lucas ran into an old friend of his who was a Black female, BUT viewers never heard of her prior to the episode and they only reunited outside of Tree Hill. Also, Latina Anna Taggaro became a recurring character, along with being the very first bisexual woman of color on a US TV show. |
| 205 | * Happens InUniverse in ''Series/{{Psych}}'': In "Psych the Musical", Gus complains about the [[ShowWithinAShow cast members of a musical production]] being all white. They point out that being an adaption of the UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper story, it takes place in 19th century London, to which he responds "So what are you saying, Black people hadn't been invented yet?" He also points out that it wouldn't be unreasonable to at least have some of the minor characters be played by actors of other races.[[note]]He is right that back then black people did live in London, and Asians too.[[/note]] |
| 206 | * An occasional criticism of ''Series/TrueBlood'', since the number of minority characters shown does ''not'' correspond with the real-life American South, which has the largest concentration of African-Americans in the country and a growing Hispanic population. Worse, almost all the non-white characters on the show are directly connected to each other: series regulars Tara and Lafayette are cousins, and a good chunk of the minority recurring characters are their family members and love interests. |
| 207 | * In an episode of ''Series/CriminalMinds'', the gang travels to UsefulNotes/{{Cleveland}} to take on a serial killer in the city's east side, and it soon becomes clear that the producers have never actually ''been'' there. Every Clevelander shown onscreen is white and middle-classed even though the East Side in real life is at least 90% Black and 99% WrongSideOfTheTracks. There ''are'' predominantly-white areas in the suburbs as you move away from the urban core, but the action explicitly takes place in the city proper. The murderer drew inspiration from the infamous [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Torso_Murderer Torso Killer]] from the 1930's and that seems to be the basis of Cleveland's portrayal on the show, but the city's demographics have changed ''a lot'' since then. |
| 208 | * Even though ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'' takes place in upper-class UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, there are no non-Black recurring characters and none of the kids date interracially. [[JustifiedTrope Not that Uncle Phil would have allowed that, anyway]]. The only white characters to appear in more than one episode were Kellogg, Margaret, and Frank, who, if they were lucky, got to appear in 4-6 episodes at most. |
| 209 | * ''Series/TheDukesOfHazzard'' takes place in a part of the U.S. where you would expect to see a lot of African-American people, yet there is only one Black character of any note (though that character is the highly respected sheriff of a neighbouring county). |
| 210 | * ''Series/ExtremeMakeoverHomeEdition'' features very white construction crews. If you are used to seeing non-white construction workers, this looks very odd. |
| 211 | * ''Series/OnceUponATime'' downplayed this in season 1, with Regina Mills and Sidney as the only recurring character of minority ethnicities. But Season 2 onwards began averting it, featuring Mulan and Tamara as recurring minorities as well as giving many fairytale characters a RaceLift; Rapunzel, Maid Marian, Ursula, Guinevere and Lancelot were all played by non-white actors. |
| 212 | * Very much averted in the spin off ''Series/OnceUponATimeInWonderland'' - which featured Creator/PeterGadiot (Dutch-Mexican), Naveen Andrews (Anglo-Indian), Zuleikha Robinson (Burmese-Indian) and Brian George (Anglo-Israeli) in the main cast. |
| 213 | * ''Series/TheAndyGriffithShow'' doesn't have any Black characters except as extras. Despite being set in a rural town in the South in [[TheSixties the 1960s]], there's never so much as a mention of the UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement or Segregation or many similar issues that would certainly have been concerns for real law enforcement officers at the time. In fact this was an EnforcedTrope; Griffith wanted to include African Americans in main roles but was overruled by ExecutiveMeddling fearing that [[ValuesDissonance it would be too controversial for Southern audiences]]. |
| 214 | * ''Series/HillStreetBlues'' had a memorable in-universe example of this when Ray Caitano was named "Hispanic Officer of the Year", and gave a speech bitterly calling them out on the fact that most of the officers of captain and above in the city were in the room and the only Hispanic people were the waiters. (A couple of characteristically insensitive remarks from [[NobleBigotWithABadge Lieutenant Hunter]] and the fact they'd put out a bunch of Puerto Rican flags when Ray was ''Colombian''-American really didn't help.) The series in general did a pretty good job of averting the trope, however, with numerous nonwhite main characters. |
| 215 | * ''Series/{{CSI}}'' used to have a diverse main cast...sort of: one Black (Warrick) in the main CSI team, one Latino detective (Vega) and one Asian LabRat (Archie). Until Warrick got killed off and Vega turned out to be a CorruptCop and got killed while Archie just [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome disappeared]] with the rest of the lab rats leaving only Hodges and Henry. There's also Dr. Ray Langston played by Creator/LaurenceFishburne who took Grissom's place as the lead character until he left and got replaced by D.B. Russell (Ted Danson) which made the main CSI team all-white with one Black detective. |
| 216 | * ''Series/BykerGrove'' has an in-universe example. In one episode, South Asian character Sita goes to audition for the chorus line of a musical which is being staged locally. She's the only non-white girl at the audition and the casting director rejects her without explaining why she is unsuitable or even giving her chance to do her audition piece, simply telling her: "Sorry, no. We can't use you." Sita is convinced she was turned down because of her ethnicity (we never find out if this is true or if there was another reason behind the decision) and, her confidence shattered, vows never to go to an audition again. However, her friends manage to cheer her up by persuading her to join a singing group they have formed. |
| 217 | * ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'' faces such criticism. Despite the SettingUpdate, London is almost as white as if it was in the Victorian era. While the second episode has [[TheTriadsAndTheTongs a Chinese criminal organization as antagonists]], all other main characters are white. Detective Sally Donovan and Watson's therapist are the only recurring characters of colors and they're very minor. |
| 218 | * Averted on ''Series/{{Empire}}''. While other shows starring Black upper-class families play this trope ''very'' straight (''Series/TheCosbyShow'' and ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'' come to mind), ''Empire'' regularly features supporting characters and love interests of different races. |
| 219 | * ''Series/TheBrothersGarcia'' is the rare Hispanic variation. Granted it's set in San Antonio, whose population is over 60% Hispanic, but the only non-Hispanic recurring character is a TokenBlackFriend who's only in a handful of episodes and Carlos's rival Eddie Bauer (who's white). This was intentional on the part of the creator; wanting to create an English-speaking show with a majority Latino cast. |
| 220 | * In a country with a worldwide colonial heritage and lots of Arab, African or Asian immigrants, it is interesting that French sitcom ''Series/LesFillesDaCote'' has 100% monochrome casting. Even the highly toned [[LivingProp background extras]] in the gym are all white. |
| 221 | * This trope was one of the many criticisms that [[https://amp.slate.com/arts/2017/12/hallmarks-21-movie-christmas-countdown-reviewed.html one review]] levied at the Hallmark Channel's annual Christmas movie marathon. |
| 222 | * ''Series/{{Defiance}}'': The show was an absolutely ''egregious'' example of this trope for numerous reasons and only got worse with it as time went on. First, it's not only set [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture forty years from now]] where one would expect a more diverse human population, it's set in ''St. Louis'', a majority-Black city ([[CaliforniaDoubling yet filmed in Canada]]) yet one could count the number of Black humans appearing on one hand during its entire run and that's including extras. Second, it's [[AnImmigrantsTale immigration allegory]] with RubberForeheadAliens whose FantasticSlur for humans is "pink skins", suggesting humanity's gotten ''whiter'' over the years despite every species of alien put together there still having less variety among themselves as the Native American being called that snarks back by showing his wrist and saying, "this look pink to you?" Third, main character [[NominalHero Joshua]] [[VanillaProtagonist Nolan]] being a textbook WhiteMaleLead and [[WhiteMansBurden White Savior]] from his FantasticRacism down to a HeroicSacrifice for an alien race, and he's [[TheFace marketed so prominently]] you'd be remiss to think there were ''any'' cast members of color. Fourth, everything culturally human/"Old World" being depicted as monolithically white compared to the aliens being a mish-mash of {{fantasy counterpart culture}}s, so even the Native American family are more like old money W.A.S.Ps having a CultureClash with ethnic foreigners, such as daughter Christie (who's in an InterspeciesRomance with one) being stupid enough to put on the alien equivalent of ''Blackface'' without any self-awareness. By the third season, [[spoiler:''all'' of the original humans of color]] are dead, with the most prominent Black character, [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter Tommy]] (and only Black character to appear for more than two episodes), being either ignored/sidelined by the show itself or [[ButtMonkey shit on]] by [[JerkAss Nolan]] for two seasons until [[spoiler:he was killed off near the end of season two]], meaning that besides the minority actors playing aliens, the show ended whiter than it ''started.'' |
| 223 | * ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In an [[InvertedTrope inversion]] of the usual application of this trope in 1960, all of the actors with speaking roles in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E27TheBigTallWish The Big Tall Wish]]", with the exception of Walter Burke, are African-Americans. It is especially notable as the episode did not concern racial issues. |
| 224 | * ''Series/LoveHate'' having a majority white cast would make more sense if it weren't set in 2010s Dublin. This is of course a result of TwoDecadesBehind - Ireland was a homogeneous country until the 90s, when the economic boom saw significant immigration of other nationalities. Despite large amounts of African, Venezuelan and Chinese communities - the only major non-white character was Gav. Rosie (played by the Irish-Ethiopian Creator/RuthNegga) was a protagonist in the first two seasons but her departure drew attention to just how white the main cast was. |
| 225 | * ''Series/NormalPeople'', another Irish-set series, justifies this in the early episodes. The story begins in rural Sligo, with only the occasional person of colour in the background. Once things move to Dublin in the fourth episode, more minorities show up. It's further used to highlight the differences between the two locations. |
| 226 | * Parodied on an episode of ''Series/InLivingColor'' where Creator/JimCarrey played a [[HostileShowTakeover channel-hopping Ross Perot]] who overtook several television networks, including a comedy station where he tells a joke to an unreceptive audience of "You ever notice how there's no Blacks, no Jews, no Puerto Ricans on ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons''? Future seems pretty bright, don't you think?" |
| 227 | * ''Series/{{Vida}}'': Nearly all of the characters are Latino, except for a couple minor White ones. As it's set in a heavily Latino section of LA and focuses on their lives though, it makes sense. |
| 228 | * ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'', despite being set in the very-diverse Chicago, only features three recurring minority characters: Officer Dan, news reporter [[OverlyLongName Miranda Veracruze de la Hoya Cardinal]], and Al's coworker Griff. The first two are only sporadically recurring, and while Griff appears more frequently, he was a late addition to the cast. The show also had at least four proposed spinoffs by way of PoorlyDisguisedPilot episodes, and ''those'' were all-white too. Interestingly, series co-creator Michael G. Moye is African-American. |
| 229 | * While ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' only suffers from this trope due to the very limited cast (and also being shot in Minnesota, a state whose population at the time was 98% white and has not changed very much since then), the show is not above mocking the films they watch having very few minorities. ''Film/CatalinaCaper'' gets quite pointed about this, and in the episode featuring ''Film/Tormented1960'', Crow points out how strange it is that the jazz pianist protagonist does not seem to know any black people. |
| 230 | * ''Series/ComeBackMrsNoah'', a shortlived 1978 British comedy set in the year 2050. Despite numerous gags about future Britain being a multicultural society, good luck seeing anyone of color in the cast or even as an extra. |
| 231 | * ''Series/CrashAndBernstein'''s lead human cast (Cole Jensen, Landry Bender, Oana Gregory, and Aaron Landon) is entirely white, as is its extended cast (Mary Birdsong, [=McKenna=] Grace, and Danny Woodburn). And while Crash himself is a puppet, his puppeteer Tim Lagasse is white as well. This is understandable, because all but two of them are members of a family. |
| 232 | * ''Series/GirlMeetsWorld'': All of the show's main cast members are white, despite the fact that the show is set in the very diverse New York City. |
| 233 | * Kay Ben M'Rad, executive producer of ''Series/H2OJustAddWater'', later expressed regret at the lack of diversity on the series. The Gold Coast is one of the most diverse parts of Australia, and yet minor character Tiffany (the InnocentBetaBitch to Miriam in Season 1) is the only Black person of any note. Cleo was considered AmbiguouslyBrown by fans, as she has two fair-skinned white parents, but Phoebe Tonkin is just tanned from her Italian heritage. |
| 234 | * ''Series/Ted2024'': This is {{lampshade|Hanging}}d when Ted acknowledges how white the population of John's high school is while also justified because they live in a Boston suburb in 1993. John mentions that there was an Indian student the previous year, but "[[CrossesTheLineTwice they got him]]". |
| 235 | * ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': Most episodes had only white characters, but there were definitely exceptions (one even had an all-black cast, something very unusual in the early 1960s). |
| 236 | [[/folder]] |
| 237 | |
| 238 | [[folder:Professional Wrestling]] |
| 239 | * This was a problem in pro wrestling right up until the 1990s. In the USA for example, there was segregation and though Black wrestlers were often popular attractions despite it, there were fears of giving them too much prominence for fear of race riots. Jack Veneno, Wrestling/BoboBrazil and Carlos Colon did become Wrestling/{{N|ationalWrestlingAlliance}}WA World Champion but their names were struck from the record books. Tony Atlas reportedly almost starved to death from lack of work while Wrestling/BruiserBrody refused to book him at all (though Brody was later said to have [[ExecutiveMeddling gotten that order from above]].) Even some cases like Wrestling/JunkyardDog, who was the top star of Mid-South Wrestling for close to 5 years in the early '80s with a number of singles and tag title reigns but got nothing in the WWF, who incidentally along with Jim Crockett put companies like Mid-south out of business, making it look even worse down the line that it was rare for Black wrestlers to be booked to win titles until Wrestling/RonSimmons defeated Wrestling/BigVanVader for the top Wrestling/{{WCW}} Title in 1992. As far as anyone can determine, there were few Black main-eventers on WWE television until [[Wrestling/AllenCoage Bad News Brown]] challenged Wrestling/RandySavage for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship - and it wouldn't happen again until Mabel challenged [[Wrestling/KevinNash Diesel]] for the WWE Championship in 1995, and lost. Japanese wrestler Wrestling/AntonioInoki ''did'' hold the WWE Championship briefly in 1979, but his run was later stricken from the record book, and an Asian or Pacific Islander would not win the title again until Wrestling/{{Yokozuna}} in 1993. Wrestling/PedroMorales was WWE Champion for a while in the '70s, but the first WWE Champion to have no European ancestry at all was [[Wrestling/DwayneJohnson The Rock]] (half-Black, half-Samoan). |
| 240 | ** That said, there were rare occasions where titleholders were non-European descent, at least in the WWF, with these exceptions almost always being Tag Team Champions. By far the most successful of the non-Anglo Saxons was Wrestling/TitoSantana, a Mission, Texas native who was of Hispanic heritage; he held both the Intercontinental and Tag Team championships on multiple occasions, and at one point was seriously considered for a World Heavyweight Championship run. [[note]](He had challenged both Wrestling/TheIronSheik (both wrestlers were disqualified) and Wrestling/SgtSlaughter (winning by disqualification) when they were champions, in 1984 and 1991, respectively. Santana got a serious look in the wake of the WWF steroid scandal and the WWF -- also trying to move on from the now-tired Characters/WWERockNWrestling formula -- was looking for a star to carry them through the 1990s, and lucha libre (a style popular in Mexico and with Hispanic wrestlers) was seriously considered ... but the WWF decided to look to Canada and Wrestling/BretHart ... and Santana's fellow Texan, Wrestling/ShawnMichaels, instead.)[[/note]] Wrestling/TheWildSamoans (Polynesian descent) were the most prominent Tag Team example, holding the titles on three occasions from 1980 to 1983. General Adnan, who is of Iraqi descent, was billed as Native American when he and Chief Jay Strongbow co-held the Tag Team Championship in 1977, while Wrestling/MrFuji (who was billed as Japanese but was actually Hawaiian) teamed with an actual Japanese native, Masa Saito, to win the WWF Tag Team Championship, holding them from 1981 to 1983. The Soul Connection -- Tony Atlas and Rocky Johnson -- became the first African American titleholders of any of the three major titles when they defeated the Wild Samoans in 1983. Additionally, both Atlas and Johnson, and Wrestling/JimmySnuka (Polynesian descent) got main-event matches against Intercontinental Champion the [[Wrestling/DonMuraco Magnificent Muraco]], while the Junkyard Dog faced Wrestling/GregValentine for the Intercontinental Championship. The first World Heavyweight Champion to be of non-European descent (other than Morales, of Hispanic heritage) was Wrestling/TheIronSheik, who was of Iranian heritage. The most prominent African American challenger for the title, at least during the Kayfabe-era, was Bad News Brown's challenging both Randy Savage and Wrestling/HulkHogan for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship; Hogan would be tormented in 1989 by Zeus (actor Tom Lister Jr. in his ''Film/NoHoldsBarred'' movie role). |
| 241 | * The WWF women wrestlers, or "[[InsistentTerminology Divas]]" as they would come to be known as, were a bit like this when they first started out - management favouring Caucasian blondes. The Wrestling/JumpingBombAngels had the women's tag titles in the late 1980s but it wouldn't be till the mid 1990s that other Japanese wrestlers came in. To be fair, there were quite a few[[note]]Tomoko Watanabe, Wrestling/LionessAsuka, Kyoko Inoue, Chaparrita ASARI, Sakie Hasegawa, Wrestling/AjaKong-it's said Wrestling/VinceMcMahon has a tendency to over correct but they were all good wrestlers so no one really cared this time[[/note]] but besides Wrestling/BullNakano they were gone [[ShooOutTheNewGuy almost as soon as they got there]] and then the entire women's division was scrapped. Upon it's "revival", {{Wrestling/Jacqueline}} was the only minority Diva for years (and the first African-American to become Women's Champion). The Diva Searches were a similar case, featuring mostly white girls (although the winners of the last two Diva Searches were minorities - Wrestling/{{Layla}} El (Spanish-Moroccan) and Wrestling/EveTorres.) From there WWE went through periods where the majority of the wrestlers were of noticeable African ancestry and where the majority were latina. In the latter case, many were still white Latinas and WWE employed four Asian women since 2003 - Wrestling/GailKim (Korean), Hiroko (Japanese), Lena Yada (Japanese) and [[Wrestling/AngelaFong Savannah]] (Chinese), none whom were ever on the main roster together, compared to the brief surge of the 90s. |
| 242 | * Ashley America argued for this in Valkyrie Women's Pro Wrestling, insisting that pro wrestling fans expected a certain kind of wrestler, namely one such as herself, and that no one wanted to see diversity. In case the point was missed, she said this after insisting [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain they get rid of the "Native American]]" Nyla Rose. |
| 243 | * ''{{Wrestling/Wrestlicious}}'' featured a rather huge proportion of white women wrestlers compared to women of colour, despite picking a mixture of women on the indies and actresses and models trained for the show. The only prominent woman of colour was Lil' Slamm - although the 2010 reshoots added in Coco Montegro (played by Josette Bynum). There were two Latinas in Bandita and Maria Toro but that was about it. Wrestling/MiaYim did work live events but never appeared on TV, and a one-shot belly dancer character called Aziza had a cameo in one episode. |
| 244 | [[/folder]] |
| 245 | |
| 246 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 247 | * The [[TwoGirlsToATeam main cast of planeswalkers]] all have very Eurocentric appearances: they're all as pale as humanly possible and they all look like Europeans, Jace and Liliana comes from European-looking places and dressed in European-looking clothes when they were young, Gideon is even more obviously "Greek" (precisely, he's from the Greece-themed plane Theros) as his origin shows. It's really hard to buy into the fact that a pale redhead such as Chandra, who was named after a Hindu god, is supposed to be of "Indian" descent (precisely, she's from the India-themed plane Kaladesh), with brown parents and all. Apart from that, Creator/WizardsOfTheCoast have put quite some effort into borrowing elements from various cultures to have more diverse planes and characters (Japan for Kamigawa, Ancient Greece for Theros, Mongolia and Tibet for Tarkir, India for Kaladesh, Ancient Egypt for Amonkhet, the Americas for Ixalan, China, etc.). |
| 248 | * The ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' sourcebooks for UsefulNotes/NewOrleans, UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}}, and UsefulNotes/{{Milwaukee}} are conspicuously lacking in minority NPC characters, even though all three cities have either a Black majority or plurality. |
| 249 | * The future of humanity depicted in ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' was extremely white and extremely male, much like the artists, game designers and player demographic. It was never intended that way, and was usually justified by the difficulty in modelling ethnicity without physical stereotyping or that artists were uncomfortable & inexperienced with drawing non-white characters. Games Workshop eventually began a push in the mid 2010's to do more to diversify humanity within the setting, stories & artwork, introducing more explicitly non-white, non-male and non-heterosexual characters. |
| 250 | ** Averted in some specific instances. The Salamanders are all Black,[[note]]but not racially; their skin is literally jet back due to weirdness between their homeworld's natural radiation and their geneseed[[/note]] Literature/CiaphasCain and ComicBook/DamnationCrusade feature minor Black characters, some Space Marine chapters have ethnic inspiration for their designs or names such as the Raven Guard (Indigenous American), Crimson Fists (Latino), White Scars (Mongolian), Thousand Sons (Persian/Egyptian). |
| 251 | ** Imperial Guard regiments can also have ethnic inspirations. Tallarn Desert Raiders (Middle Eastern), Attilan Rough Riders (Asian influenced), Death Korp of Krieg (Western European). |
| 252 | * ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' features near 1:1 transplants of 15th to 17th century European countries as the human focus factions (Germany/Empire,[[note]]With bits of Spain and Britain thrown in for flavor.[[/note]] France/Bretonnia,[[note]]Or, more accurately, the High Medieval composite monarchy that was composed of equal parts French and English territories, with a multiethnic population but solidly Francophone ruling class.[[/note]] Norsca/Scandinavia, Russia-Poland/Kislev, Italy/Tilea, Westerland/Netherlands, and Spain/Estalia in rough order of prominence) in a preindustrial setting where long range travel is extremely difficult, with the {{demihuman}} civilizations all being drawn from European myth (most notably elves, dwarfs, and halflings); thus all the major characters are either European-looking or are inhuman BeastMan types (like the Lizardmen, Skaven, and Orcs). The vaguely Iranic and Turkic Kurgan are the most common minions of Chaos, but as AlwaysChaoticEvil {{mooks}} don't receive much focus and have a grand total of two notable characters. There's also Araby, a minor power inspired by the Barbary states that shows up rarely, and the Egyptian-inspired Nekhara, home of the Tomb Kings, which would be a prominent enough faction to avert this trope for the setting but for the fact that they're [[TheUndead all skeletons]]. The setting is basically an FictionalEarth focused on Europe, the (post-colonization) Americas, North Africa and West Asia, but the Native Americans are replaced by {{Mayincatec}} LizardFolk while the Middle Easterners are replaced by [[OurOrcsAreDifferent Orcs]]. The [[HufflepuffHouse lands of the east]], most notably Cathay (Warhammer!China, the most populous human realm), get the occasional reference, but are too far away from the center of the action to get more. The ''Old World'' relaunch would be the first edition to avert this as Cathay was made into a leading playable faction. |
| 253 | * ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' has had issues with this trope since the game began. Most D&D settings are heavily derived on old depictions of Medieval Europe (which tended to be a lot more monochrome than Europe was in actuality). While 3rd Edition made a conscious effort to improve the racial diversity of the default characters in the Player's Handbook, settings books for ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' still tended to show pictures of towns and cities that were filled with white people. |
| 254 | [[/folder]] |
| 255 | |
| 256 | [[folder:Theater]] |
| 257 | * Parodied in the Creator/ReducedShakespeareCompany's ''All The Great Books (Abridged)'', where one of the characters, a community college drama teacher, claims to have directed the very first all-white production of ''Ain't Misbehavin'''. |
| 258 | ** The Other RSC also {{lampshade|Hanging}} their monochrome cast (of three, so maybe Justified) in the Cmplt Wrks f Shkspr when they come to ''Theatre/{{Othello}}''; they note that none of them really feel qualified to play Othello, but [[TheDitz Adam]] is going to have a go. No Blackface involved - he comes on with a string of toy boats around his neck, having misunderstood [[ForgottenTrope the term 'Moor'.]] |
| 259 | ** A production had the role played by a Black guy, with the other actors shamefully admitting afterward that they had just left him to do Othello on his own because he was Black. (Incidentally, the others were Hispanic and Jewish, leading to the ad-lib "We can't do Othello, but we can make a lot of jokes like this, so that's good.") |
| 260 | * ''Shuffle Along'', ''Cabin in the Sky'', ''Theatre/PorgyAndBess'', ''Theatre/TheWiz'', and ''Theatre/{{The Color Purple|Musical}}'' are some of the Broadway musicals with an all-Black cast.[[note]]For a longer list, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:All-Black_cast_Broadway_shows go here.]][[/note]] Considering the heavy cultural scripts and backgrounds of said works, these plays could not experience RaceLifting. |
| 261 | * Purposely averted with ''Theatre/{{Hamilton}}'', which has many [[=POCs=]] portraying historically white characters, with the exception of King George, who is always played by a TokenWhite. |
| 262 | * ''Literature/FlowerDrumSong'', despite being a Creator/RodgersAndHammerstein musical, is notable for having an Asian-American version of this trope. In the movie of the musical, there is a single white person in the entire film, a man with one line who robs one of the main characters and is never seen again. Every other main character, side character (with a single FakeNationality exception), and extra is an American of east-Asian descent. |
| 263 | * Music/StephenSondheim's ''Theatre/PacificOvertures'' is written to be performed by a cast of all Asian men. |
| 264 | [[/folder]] |
| 265 | |
| 266 | [[folder:Toys]] |
| 267 | * Franchise/{{Lego}} has this trope Zig-Zagged. All of their minifigures in non-licensed sets have yellow skin. This was decided to make them racially neutral, so that the balance seems appropriate for all cultures. However, early licensed sets still used yellow skin, and Black characters/actors got brown skin for accuracy, unfortunately making every yellow minifigure that had been released look white by comparison. Soon, licensed figures all got appropriate flesh tones to solve the problem. |
| 268 | [[/folder]] |
| 269 | |
| 270 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 271 | * Before the Shipwrecked [=DLC=] was released, ''VideoGame/DontStarve'' was guilty of this, even now with all of its new characters having been introduced the cast is still mostly made up of white people. |
| 272 | * [[Creator/SquareEnix Enix]] was a pretty big offender. ''VideoGame/{{Actraiser}}'' kicks in with some FridgeHorror when the player [[AGodIsYou is god]] and creates his followers in a short cut scene on each level. Apparently the player never chooses people with any melanin in their skin, even in the middle of the jungle or desert stage. ''VideoGame/SoulBlazer'' carried on the tradition when the player was an angel sent to free the imprisoned souls of white people, talking furniture, gnomes, mice, and even flowers, but of no people of color at all. ''VideoGame/IllusionOfGaia'' also featured no non-whites of any note. |
| 273 | * Creator/BlackIsleStudios and Creator/BioWare were guilty of this as well. ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment'', ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'', ''VideoGame/IcewindDale'', ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights'', ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'', and ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic I'' and ''II'' were guilty of having almost every NPC be white, even in heavily-traveled regions of the setting. Almost all of the plot-relevant ones are, anyway. The PlayerCharacter, at least, was allowed to be the race of the player's choice (except in ''Torment'', where the protagonist's ethnicity is impossible to determine because his skin is completely covered in scar tissue). ''Torment'' and ''Knights of the Old Republic'' had no excuse, as the former has a CityOfAdventure that touches all existence and the latter was set in the ''Franchise/StarWars'' verse. A weakly JustifiedTrope in the other games, due to the difficulty of travel. ''Dragon Age'', where magical travel does not exist, perhaps gets the most slack. Another offender is ''VideoGame/JadeEmpire'', except almost everyone is faux-Chinese. Justified, as it was set in a mythical realm based on China. Creator/JohnCleese plays a scene-stealing complete boob of a racist "European." Averted in ''Franchise/MassEffect'', where the characters are much more varied and continued to become more mixed as the series progressed. |
| 274 | * ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'', made by Creator/ObsidianEntertainment after Creator/BioWare chose to focus on original IP between games, averts this in the second ExpansionPack ''Storm of Zehir''. While the MedievalEuropeanFantasy Sword Coast region is still prominent as in the original campaign, about half the game takes place in Samarach, which is a [[FantasyCounterpartCulture stand-in for tropical Africa]], and so much of the cast is darker-skinned, including two of the humans and the halfling. |
| 275 | * Following the ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' example above, the ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar'' series, ''VideoGame/FireWarrior'', and ''VideoGame/Warhammer40000SpaceMarine''. Despite the various Imperial factions supposedly representing humanity, they are all white. This is actually meant to make the player uncomfortable, a point that is lost on much of the fanbase. The Sisters of Battle, for example, are fanatics who insist on strict thought control and execute unbelievers and heretics and traitors with rapturous glee, and they dress in Black with red, white, and gold highlights. The Imperium's battle standard is an eagle with two heads. Their {{super soldier}}s are augmented superhumans with genetic modifications who are worried about the purity of those genes. This [[ANaziByAnyOtherName should start to sound familiar]]. |
| 276 | * ''VideoGame/BrutalLegend'''s human cast is all white. The game world does run on heavy metal and much of the cast are an {{Expy}} of some famous figure in HeavyMetal, so there still were many non-whites to draw from. |
| 277 | * ''VideoGame/AlanWake'' has about twenty characters, all of them Caucasian. It is set in a small town in the Pacific Northwest roughly around 2005-2010, and in some such towns the minority population is quite small. |
| 278 | * ''VideoGame/StarCraft'' does have some minority characters. 3 to be precise, and all of them are killed on-screen by Sarah Kerrigan. The terran WorkerUnit is the only Black unit in the whole game (there's also the Moroccan-appearing Samir Duran, but he's not human). |
| 279 | * Averted with [=KingsGroup=]'s ''State of Survival'' but it leads to another issue. Set in a zombie-infested US, the heroes are only slightly more than 50% white. However the population percentages are rather suspect. There's only 2 black heroes (one of them was an ex-crime boss), rather the largest minority by far are East Asian (Japanese and Korean) teenaged girls - almost all being described as beautiful somewhere in their description which other fan-servicey characters like Becca do not. Between the girls and the two Asian dudes, their population size is fairly close to the dominant Caucasian population. |
| 280 | * ''Franchise/TheWitcher'' series is another justified example, being a LowFantasy franchise set in a location based on medieval Poland, Scandinavia, and the Holy Roman Empire; thus every character looks Northern European aside from a handful of traders/mercenaries from the Arab-esque Ofir in the third game's ''Haert of Stone'' expansion pack. |
| 281 | [[/folder]] |
| 282 | |
| 283 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 284 | * In a literal example, every human in ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' is drawn with literally white skin. Not quite an example - WordOfGod [[https://mspandrew.tumblr.com/post/15937434515/predictably dictates that by intent,]] {{Mukokuseki}} is in full effect and no-one save his AuthorAvatar (Caucasian, coloured orange) has any defined race, or for that matter other physical characteristics beyond the basics, and that one reference to Bro being white was an error that he put in before he'd clearly established the character. |
| 285 | * Every character in ''Webcomic/{{Teahouse}}'' is white. After this was pointed out to the writers, they did include a person of colour in as a non-speaking servant. Naturally people complained and they wrote out out a [[http://cry-some-more.demon-sushi.com/?attachment_id=1137 "we're not racist"]] blog. A non-white character has yet to have any dialog. |
| 286 | * ''Webcomic/CollegeRoomiesFromHell'' has an all-white cast, the main characters all have different hair colors. |
| 287 | * ''Webcomic/StandStillStaySilent'' is subject to this despite being set in post DepopulationBomb Nordic countries, due to some of them having a more racially diverse population in the present day than those living outside them tend to assume them to have. The author's justification is that there were survivors of non-Scandinavian heritage to the DepopulationBomb, but their numbers were so small that they ended up reproducing with the white-skinned population during the ninety years separating the apocalypse from the time in which the main story is set. |
| 288 | [[/folder]] |
| 289 | |
| 290 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 291 | * Invoked in Creator/LindsayEllis's review of ''Film/YouveGotMail''. Having lived in New York City, she points out that the city in real life is not nearly as white as the film makes it out to be. She suggests that the film was made that way to appeal to middle-class, Midwestern white women and what ''they'' imagine NYC to be like. |
| 292 | * Several British casting directors took to Twitter in 2020 amid the George Floyd protests to recount plenty of times they've had to push for diversity in the shows they're given to cast - and for the period dramas that are so popular amongst the public, they're often given the "[[BlackVikings historical accuracy]]" response if they attempt to include non-white actors in the cast. |
| 293 | [[/folder]] |
| 294 | |
| 295 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 296 | * Not even cartoons are exempt! The biggest offender was probably ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons''. It takes place in the far off future (2062),[[note]]Which was exactly 100 years after the show first aired (1962)[[/note]] but there's not a single minority to be seen in the original 60s run. [[note]] To be fair, this makes sense for the time period in which the show was made. Racial issues were quite controversial in the 60s, thus, having a minority character in the show might have been considered offensive. [[/note]] |
| 297 | * ''WesternAnimation/ClerksTheAnimatedSeries'': |
| 298 | ** {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d and parodied when Dante and Randal respond to viewer mail complaining about the show's Monochrome Casting. They respond by adding a new Black character named [[Franchise/StarWars Lando]] who does little more than wave to the guys as he passes them on the street. |
| 299 | ** Further parodied when the guys later need a helicopter pilot to get them in the air, and "Lando" is the man to do it. Cut to Lando eagerly offering to help, only to learn that Dante and Randal were talking about a ''different'' Lando; another white guy. |
| 300 | * ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' was originally ''meant'' to be this way, being set in rural Colorado where [[MagicalNegro Chef]] as the TokenMinority. Eventually they had a TokenMinority student ''[[LampshadeHanging named]]'' [[TheGenericGuy Token]] as well, [[spoiler:though the episode The Big Fix retcons it to having always been Tolkien]]. Nowadays the town seems to be more diverse, with the City Wok guy [[spoiler:actually a white guy with multiple personalities]], a Japanese restaurateur, the Asian-looking "6th Grader Leader" and several others. Minor character Kevin was identified as Asian American in one of the earlier seasons, though this is rarely brought up. This is actually somewhat TruthInTelevision - Colorado's population ''has'' changed over the time the show has been running. Mr. Garrison after he became elected as President had his homeroom teacher position replaced by an Asian woman. |
| 301 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Brickleberry}}'' is meant to be sort of like this, with Hazelhurst being an extremely white town in the bible belt of America, where major and minor characters range from rich white men to trailer trash hillbillies and most of the population being bigoted, uneducated, slightly or majorly racist scumbags. This is mainly done for the sake of making Denzel pretty much the only Black guy within miles of Brickleberry National Park. |
| 302 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheBoondocks'' takes place in the suburbs of Woodcrest, Maryland, and the main and recurring cast consists almost entirely Black people. Aside from Sarah, Gin, Cindy, and The Wuncler Family, the only white people to make prominent recurring appearances are either white-passing or mixed-race like Jazmine. |
| 303 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Visionaries}}'' features a cast exclusively made up of white people, from minor to major characters. The only Black people seen are in background group shots. Even the canceled second toy line would not have fixed this. |
| 304 | * The main cast of ''WesternAnimation/FatAlbertAndTheCosbyKids'' is entirely Black as are most of the supporting cast. The only characters of other races are one-time characters of the day. |
| 305 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'' was by and large about the robots, but the main four or five humans in the cast (Sparkplug, Spike, Daniel, Carly, and Chip Chase) are all white and the number of meaningful non-Caucasian humans in the supporting cast, even if they only featured in one episode, could probably be counted on one hand, to say nothing of the fact that many of those characters were cringingly bad stereotypes besides (so bad, in fact, that Creator/CaseyKasem left the show because of the ''incredibly'' racist Arab stereotypes in Season 3). |
| 306 | ** Later series' varied: ''WesternAnimation/BeastWars'' was set before the existence of Humanity as we know it, while ''Anime/TransformersRobotsInDisguise'' had a hard case of {{Mukokuseki}}. ''Anime/TransformersArmada'' had a token nonwhite Hispanic, while the rest of the Unicron Trilogy (''Energon'' and ''Cybertron'') were both mostly monochromatic. ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'' went nearly the other way, with only one supporting character and most human villains being white: the primary Human Buddies were Indian [[spoiler:(then one turned out to be [[RoboticReveal Cybertronian after all]]).]] ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime,'' on the other hand managed a fairly diverse human cast. |
| 307 | * Every human main character in ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'' is white. Later cartoons from Creator/CraigMcCracken have more diversity, as ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'' introduces African-American character Goo, and ''WesternAnimation/KidCosmic'' has a very diverse main cast. |
| 308 | * Invoked in ''WesternAnimation/MoralOrel'' as the series is a {{Deconstruction}} of white fundamentalist Protestant Christianity. The only minorities seen are the AmbiguouslyBrown Figurelli family (one episode has the town decide to discriminate against them, only for it to backfire because the 'discrimination' only ''benefitted'' the Figurellis), and a brief appearance by a black neighborhood, in which the Puppington family treated driving through it as a roller coaster, while the two people on the street looked at them like they were nuts. |
| 309 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Bluey}}'' has a FunnyAnimal example, since every character in the show is a dog of some kind, with with no other type of anthropomorphic animal in sight (aside from a ShowWithinAShow). With that said, there’s actually a wide variety of dog ''breeds'' present. For example, the titular character and her family are Heelers, which is a fairly niche breed of dog. |
| 310 | * In every incarnation of ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' ([[RaceLift except]] ''WesternAnimation/{{Velma}}''), Mystery Inc are all white teenagers, with Scooby being a brown Great Dane. |
| 311 | |
| 312 | [[/folder]] |
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