But Not Too Black - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Lightskinblacks

Would Halle Berry's career be anywhere near as successful if she were this black?

"Oh my God! I guess I do like black people! It just took a white one to prove it to me."

— Jerri Blank, Strangers With Candy

Many casting directors for commercials and many TV/film companies are in the habit of only - or mostly - hiring black actors and actresses with lighter skin colors and/or European looking features, to make them more "acceptable" to a mostly white audience.

This is especially notable in female characters, particularly if they are supposed to add sex appeal to the show. Additionally, mixed-race relationships tend to pair Caucasians up with lighter-skinned black people.

This trope is also noticeable in fashion and cosmetic print commercials. A good example of this is the the Oil of Olay commercial with blue/green eyed black model Denise Vasi. Interestingly enough Denise herself appears much lighter in the commercial than she really is in real life, being more medium brown than fair skinned. On occasion there will be an aversion of this with a chocolate-complexioned model instead of a café au lait model. But unfortunately they're few and far between.

This practice is known as "Colorism

". Of course, in some cases you may need a light-meter to tell who's lighter or darker than whom.

Also see the Black Best Friend. Contrast with Blond Guys Are Evil.

Examples:

Comic Books

Though X-Men's Storm is quite dark, she has white hair and blue eyes (when they're not completely whited out when she uses her powers), said to be marks of her bloodline, and for years was drawn with semi-Caucasian features (her original appearance as drawn by Dave Cockrum was more Asian than Cauc). Recent works, particularly during the lead-up to her marriage to Black Panther, actually drew mild fan criticism for the change of her facial structure.
- Considering the unusual nature of the appearance of many mutants—Wolverine's hairstyle and Rogue's hair color, both apparently natural just to start—and that many comics can vary in art style fairly significantly from one artist to the next, it would be hard to pinpoint how much of this is Marvel's requirements for the character and how much is artist interpretation.
Also from X-Men, this black troper gets annoyed whenever he sees Bishop with long, straight hair that flows in the breeze and clings to his face when wet. Storm's features might be from her mutation, but normal African hair is not like that, unless Bishop perms regularly, but that would be slightly out of character. However, it's been implied that Bish isn't of African descent but Australian Aboriginal, most of whom do have straight hair (if different facial structure). If this is the case, then it is certainly nice to see an Australian native in a non-stereotypical role, but this would also mean that the X-Men in their 40-year history have never had an African-American member.
- Storm may have been raised in Africa, but she was born in America and had an American father.
- Cecilia Reyes?
  - She was Puerto Rican. Maggott was a black South African, though. And plenty of the characters from the New X-Men were black, but it's arguable if they count.
  - Puerto Ricans are Americans by law, even the ones born in the island.
- Bishop is apparently of both Australian Aborginal and African-American heritage, and born in America.
X-Men ~~artists~~ colorists must be fond of this trope, because M's skin tone is in a constant state of flux. When she first appeared in Generation X she had caramel skin. Towards the end of the book it was chocolate. When she was floating between titles it went back to caramel. But with her current stint in X-Factor, she's not even ambiguous anymore; she could be mistaken for white by readers who don't know better. It became especially baffling when other black characters started appearing in the book with more identifiable features.
- Being of French and upper-class Algerian descent, realistically she shouldn't look very 'black' at all. Skin tone, though, is more problematic. Maybe she just spent a lot of time tanning before, and quit now?
Recent issues of Justice League Of America have drawn criticism for portraying Vixen with "Caucasian" features and fluctuating skin tones.
Similarly, the recent Iron Fist series has occasional "lapses" where Misty Knight is drawn with a shag haircut and Caucasian features.

Film

Spike Lee's film School Daze references the old practice of black fraternities and sororities performing "the paper bag test" on their potential applicants - only those with skin lighter than a brown paper bag would be allowed in.
Halle Berry is a...delicate case of this. Not just lighter-skinned than, for example, Angela Bassett, she also has features that are as much Caucasian than African, due to having a white mother and a black father.
- It should be noted that almost all light-complexioned actors and entertainers have been accused of benefiting from Colorism to some extent.
- Consider that Halle Berry had plastic surgery, especially on her nose. Compare her now to when she was in "Strictly Business".
  - In a related situation, consider Adrian Brody grabbing and kissing Halle when he won the best actor Academy Award for The Pianist. Hypothetically, it's hard to argue that Denzel Washington doing the same to say, Reese Witherspoon, wouldn't have raised more problems.
  - A note: in The Pelican Brief , Denzel was paired with Julia Roberts. the black female community was upset over this, and in order to placate them Denzel now only has black female leads, many of whom avert this trope. But it's Denzel, so that's okay.
  - YMMV, but I never really liked Halle Berry much, but in the photoshopped picture above, she looks gorgeous. The silver and pearl jewelry and the golden eyes provide such contrast to the shiny, dark skin.
Actress Rae Dawn Chong is probably one of the earliest examples of a light-skinned actress constantly being paired up with white males.
Thandie Newton is often paired with a white male co-star.
Averted in the most recent Hairspray movie
It looks like Paula Patton is heading down this road.
Lampshaded in one of the special DVD features for The Incredibles. Frozone and Mr. Incredible watch a really, really awful licensed cartoon. Frozone is offended that the version of him in cartoon is lightly tanned at best— "Why am I beige!" —and talking like a Beatnik. (The movie had him looking very similar to his voice actor, Samuel L Jackson.)
A major plot point for the film Imitation Of Life
Satirized in Undercover Brother when The Chief said "We can make the world a safe place for black people of all races", which was a Take That to black people who like to subdivide themselves based on skin tone.
Lisa Bonet (outside the Cosby Show, that is, as the Cosby family were a rainbow coalition).
Retired Pornstar Heather Hunter claimed that earlier in her career she was pressured to do scenes only with white performers. Although most of her partners were white (and mainly females), she arguably never fully obliged. On the other hand she didn't start having black co-stars until her last couple years in the industry. So there might have been SOME hesitation.
- A lot of top white female performers refuse to perform with black performers out of fear of losing their "marketing value". However this appears to be changing some. In fact some of the ones who said they wouldn't, completely reneged later on in there careers. But MOST still don't (despite the fact that interracial porn is a selling point for much of the marketing).
  - Unfortunatiely, when used as a selling point, it tends to be along the lines of "savage black man dominates helpless lily white female" (way, way more than merely Unfortunate Implications). So it's not something the top performers want to be associated with.
  - Nina Hartley had a alternate explanation, saying that a lot of top white female actresses didn't want to do IR because of the fear of a backlash from their white male audience.
- Marie Luv said if she was lighter, or white she would be better known.
Will Smith said that Eva Mendes was cast opposite him in "Hitch" because casting a black actress would have made it a "black movie" that would turn off white audiences, while casting a white actress would have created interracial issues the studio would prefer to avoid.
Averted with Light Complexioned actresses like Michael Michele, Nicole Ari Parker, Kristen Wilson, Leila Arcieri, and Rochelle Aytes as they're usually paired with black men. Although this could still have other kinds of Unfortunate Implications for black men.
In many "race movies" (films made in the US by blacks for black audiences prior to the 60s), the female lead was typically played by a light skinned black, sometimes so light she could be mistaken for white. Meanwhile, dark-skinned females were cast as the heroine's maid, or other servants. This also applied to the men less so, though it was still rare to see light-skinned blacks cast as porters and waiters. This still exists to a certain degree in current black media. See the silent film "Happiness", the cowboy serial "the Creole Kid", and 1939s "Moon Over Harlem".
- And after that era there was Lena Horne, and Dorothy Dandridge.
Anthony Hopkins' The Human Stain covers this.
Both supported and contradicted (in other words, parodied) in Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle. In the sketch about "Black Acting School," the host of the commercial asserts that Hollywood prefers dark-skinned black actors to play thugs and low-lifes, and implies that these are the only roles available to black men.
Used in the French movie 99 Francs: the CEO of a dairy company (a clear expy of Dannon) refuses to cast a black woman in a yogurt commercial (claiming it's "too much Africanity for our audience"); the main character chooses to cast a fair-skinned girl from Maghreb (thus African as well) and nobody complains. Considering the movie is the adaptation of a Take That against the advertising business, the whole point (rich, upper-class people can also be stupid, racist assholes, even when they are worth tens of billions) is rather Anvilicious, but then again....
Harold And Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay lampshades this with a barely black security guard. Kumar accuses him of racism when is "randomly selected" to be searched. The security guards he can't be racist because he's black, to which Kumar calls him barely black. Note that the guard could easily pass for a Caucasian, unless he drives through the Deep South.
Laura Gemser from the Black Emanuelle Sexploitation/Grindhouse franchise counts. The lead isn't even black but Indonesian.
- Keep in mind these were foreign films with the titles translated not entirely correctly. Or So I Heard.
Jennifer Lopez was called this when she was picked to play Selena. Considering the fact that she's not tejano but Puerto Rican.

Literature

Janie from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, who's considered to be beautiful, is described as having straight hair and a relatively light complexion. Mrs. Turner admires her for those Caucasian traits and even tries to set her up with her lighter-skinned son because she doesn't like her Not Too Black idol being married to a very dark-skinned man.
- Halle Berry quite appropriately plays Janie in the (awful) movie version of the novel.
In one novel by Andrew Vachss a black character explains "the paper bag trick" to his white friend. Paraphrased: "I know lots of black guys who do the paper bag trick— they hold a brown paper bag up next to their face in the mirror; if their skin is darker than the bag they're going nowhere in life. Nowadays black mothers want their daughters to marry lighter."
The whole point of Don't Play In The Sun.
In the Tell-All biography Confessions of a Video Vixen the author explain how her mother was favored by her grandmother due to her light complexion which put a wedge between her mom and aunts.
Feast Of All Saints touches on this.

Live Action TV

Played straight, but in the opposite direction (not too white?) in the Too Good To Last series "Frank's Place."
- To elaborate: Frank, as played by Tim Reid, is a Northern-born, Harvard-educated, medium-dark man who manages a restaurant in New Orleans. In the episode "Frank Joins the Club" he is invited to join a black men's society with selective membership, and his own employees give him guff. They tell him that the group was founded by light-skinned blacks attempting to distance themselves from anyone who fail the "paper bag test" (see School Daze, above) and that they only want him to avert their colorist history. Which leads to Frank giving the club president an awesome dressing down:
  Frank: I was the first black man at my prep school, I was the first black man in my dinner club at Harvard. But I will not be the first black man in a black men's club.
Homicide Life On The Street averted this in its earliest seasons - of the three black principal characters, two had dark skin and one had lighter skin. As the series progressed however, most of the new black characters had lighter skin, including one whose main character trait was that she was beautiful. The issue was also confronted in an episode in which Lt Giardello says that he had been turned down by black women because his nose was too flat and his skin too dark — and Giardello was part Italian.
Satirized in Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which Wanda wants Larry to get her script looked at by his colleague and explains how to "play the race card", telling him to emphasize that she's "one of those light-colored black folks".
The character Claire Kyle on My Wife and Kids, formerly played by darker-complexioned actress Jazz Raycole, was recast with the lighter-complexioned actress Jennifer Freeman.
- This was because Jazz Raycole's mother did not want her child involved in a story arc involving teenage pregnancy, ignoring the fact that her position in said arc was that of a consoler of a character played by Raven Symone. The change in appearance/actresses was lampshaded in the early minutes of the episode(s).
Janet Hubert-Whitten, who originally played Vivian Banks on the The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air, was replaced by the very slightly lighter-complexioned Daphne Maxwell Reid in the last few seasons. This was lampshaded on her first appearance.
- No, only the change in actress was lampshaded. No mention was made of the half-shade difference in color.
George Lopez's family from the George Lopez show can be called Not Too Mexican. In fact, the actress who plays Carmen (Masiela Lusha) is Albanian.
Simone (Tawny Cypress) from Heroes
- Micah is justified, however, because he has a white mother.
- Mostly averted with DL, The Haitian, and others.
  - This show has managed to incorporate notable examples of several ethnicities that almost never get major roles in American television. Most of the leading women are still blonde, though.
  - The "main cast" is ridiculously huge, so this barely counts. Claire has a blonde mother, so it makes sense, and Tracy was originally a stereotypical female ambitious politician, so blonde was the way to go. Niki is very pretty and is revealed to be an ex-stripper and worked in a casino, so her hair color fits.
In one episode of the first season of Mac Gyver, a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold makes a sarcastic comment about a woman's race ("Yes, I am a cripple. And you, madam, are black.") to help establish his initial Jerkass tendencies. The actress playing the woman in question, however, is so light-skinned as to appear Caucasian.
- Incidentally, this was one of the few women, if not the only woman, Mac Gyver didn't end up kissing in that season. While every rescued Caucasian woman flinging herself at him was rather annoying, this selective lack of kissing is somewhat suspicious as well.
Averted to the point of beating you about the head and chest by The Jeffersons, where the darkest-skinned character (Roxy Roker's Helen Willis) was married to a white man.
- Yes, but Roxie Roker was actually married to a white man. When the producer doubted she could play a black woman married to a white man, she showed him a family photo and got the part.
An episode of Eli Stone had a relatively dark-skinned (but not very) black man suing a lighter-skinned black employer for discriminatory hiring based on this trope.
Oh so averted in The Wire, where over half the cast is black, with skin tones being just what you'd expect from Baltimore residents.
A decent number of Soap Operas has been accused of this trope.
- Hispanics soapies even more so, since, save in Venezuela and Brazil (who follow this trope to a T), they tend to Monochrome Casting favoring white people.
Margaret Cho's short-lived sitcom All-American Girl is very But Not Too Asian. She makes reference to this a lot in her live shows.
This showed up in, of all places, The Cosby Show. Denise, the second oldest daughter, is so light skinned she almost appears white, and if one looks closely (and cares), her facial features are more concurrent with Caucasians than blacks.
- Did you measure her skull to determine her blood's purity, too? Oops, have to call Godwins Law on myself.
- The whole Cosby family was a technicolor assortment, as are many families with mixed ancestry.
Averted in several Star Trek iterations: Lt. Uhura in the original series, Captain Sisko in DS 9, Geordi La Forge in TNG, and Tuvok in Voyager are all quite dark and have "typically" African facial and hair structure (when Sisko had hair, anyway).
Very much intentional when it came to the casting of Anne Rice's Feast of All Saints. Because well, it was basically about fair skinned ~~black~~ Creole folks during pre-Civil War America in New Orleans. A dazzling yet damned class caught between the world of white privilege and black oppression.
Averted in the show Girlfriends where Toni, the most attractive of the central characters (most attractive as in both seen that way by male viewers and treated that way on the show) is also the darkest skinned.
True Blood plays it straight and then averts it with the same character: in the unaired pilot, the Black Best Friend Tara is played by the very light-skinned Brook Kerr, then for the series, the role was recast with the much much darker Rutina Wesley. The other two black characters in the show are also aversions.
Kendra from Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
An inversion I guess? I always wondered why in the miniseries Roots Chicken George, a mulatto, was significantly darker than his black mother, Kizzy.
- Because real-world genetics are a crapshoot.
  - Genetics are fairly random, but they can only work with what is there. It's pretty close to impossible for a white person (with all white ancestry) and a black person to have a first generation mixed child who is much, much darker than both of them. It's different if one or both of the parents have mixed ancestry.
  - Why assume they're all unmixed? The white family wouldn't have been exactly bragging about any black ancestors back then.
An episode of "Angel", "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been", focuses on Angel's past with the Hyperion hotel controlled by a paranoia demon and his relationship with a beautiful young fugitive. She stole from the bank at which she worked and went on the lam after losing her fiance and boss, respectively, when they discovered she was a half-black woman (raised in her black family until she was 15) passing for white. Her family encouraged her to pursue a better life that being light-skinned could provide, slipping under the race radar altogether.
Jennifer Beals plays a biracial woman on "The L Word". One episode focuses on her and her white wife at a group therapy session being accosted by a radical black lesbian poet. The latter accused her of embracing her lesbian lifestyle but ignoring her own blackness. Previously, she requested her wife accept a black donor's sperm for their child so s/he could racially reflect both parents, so she argued the poet down, but was very hurt.

Music

Naturi Naughton of the R&B girl group 3LW was booted from the group for being too dark, though the other two members claim that was the reason they chose her to be in the group in the first place. She was replaced by the very fair-skinned Sabrina Bryan—who is Caucasian (on her mother's side) and Mexican (on her father's side).
Fairly recently, hip-hop stars have come under fire for having predominantly light-skinned black women or other oiled up ethnically vague women of color (biracial, multiracial etc..), including Latino, Asian or even only white women in their videos. It could be argued that it's the casting director's fault, and not the fault of the artists themselves.
- This is also likely due to the fact that modeling agencies tend to favor ethnic women of a lighter shade, so they're more likely to be cast by default.
Alicia Keys was accused of benefiting from this once she received more Grammy wins over her much darker complexioned peer India Arie at the The 44th Grammy Awards, especially since India had 7 nominations and won none. This of course resulted in Hype Backlash for poor Alicia.
Tommy Mottola wanted Mariah Carey to be very vague about her race earlier in her career.
Similarly Whitney Houston while not "light skinned" was marketed in the beginning by only sending her to white A/C radio stations while avoiding Urban Radio stations to promote her debut album.
Alternative Hip-Hop group The Jungle Brothers covers this trope in a song called Black Is Black
Lenny Kravitz said that his music was considered not black enough for some record labels, and not white enough for others. Of course he never changed his sound. And continues to blend retro-soul with classic rock.
Lampshaded by Nelly Furtado in the song "Powerless":
"Paint my face in your magazine
Make it look whiter than it seems.
Paint me over with your dreams
Shove away my ethnicity."

Video Games

Sheva from Resident Evil 5, whom Yahtzee described as looking like "a white woman who's been dipped in tea." She also doesn't sound very African, using some sort of meandering British/Australian accent.
- Though to be somewhat fair, she was motion captured and modeled after Australian actress Michelle Jade Van Der Water, who is on the lighter side...though it does cater to the trope in that every other African is darker in the game and she happens to be more caramel toned.
  - She's also apparently from Britain. Also, Excella, who is villainous.
  - Sheva is actually native to Africa, and went to America as a teenager...America.
  - Also, Excella is Hispanic.
  - There is also the controversy that Sheva was only made black at all to combat the accusations of racism the game was receiving for having dark-skinned African villagers as the "monsters" of the game, so some people saw Sheva's light color as being an insufficient compromise and example of this trope (dark skinned Africans = crazy diseased zombies, light skinned African = female lead).

Western Animation

This is often a concern of Jazmine Dubois, the mixed-race girl on The Boondocks. particularly when the subject of her hair comes up. Meanwhile, Huey is often prone to accusing her of not being black enough. Poor girl can't win.
- She could be Aron's take on a Tragic Mulatto
- On a least one occasion Uncle Ruckus claimed the Freeman family are stuck up because of their relatively light skin. Ruckus himself in very dark skinned, which is (probably intentionally) ironic considering his he racist against black people. He claims to have "de-vitiligo" that makes him get darker.
Disney's first black protagonist, Tiana, in her final design, has been accused of being both a racist caricature and "Belle with a tan." In reality, she's basically her voice actress Anika Noni Rose with big huge Disney eyes. (Though in animation style she has the most resemblance to Mulan!)
- There was also some debate as whether to make her prince black ("Disney hates interracial relationships!") or not-black ("All the other ones had princes of their own race! Disney hates black men!") The plot calls for the prince to be a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold and a gambling problem, which would certainly earn it a place on the Unfortunate Implications page if he were to be black. He also catches the eye of a white Southern debutante. Disney seems to have gone for Ambiguously Brown, so that people see him as their own race, or more likely, whatever race offends them the most. All this controversy for a character who's going to be green for most of the movie anyway.
  - This Troper is worried that with all the complaining going on (it isn't even close to being out yet!) companies will just decide its not worth the bother to cast black people as anything but comical stereotype hangers on and never try it again. As for all these bitching groups, shot yourself in the foot much?

Real Life

The first black Barbie Dolls had the right skin tone, but were processed from the same mold used to make white Barbies; thus they had African-American skin but Caucasian features.
- Barbie does not have Caucasian features. Barbie does not have human features.
Note a few South Asians would pass as Caucasian save for the skin tone.
- Okay, accusing actual people of being "miscast" as a different race— the above is officially the weirdest entry I've seen on TV Tropes.
When he first started running for president, Barack Obama was questioned in the fall of 2007 with the racist musing of whether he was "black enough" to be considered black...though that rapidly vanished when he started winning a huge percentage of the African-American vote, and switched to a racist "is he too black?" question briefly in the spring of 2008. As a side note, Obama himself is biracial, but identifies as black likely because his skin is darker than the proverbial brown paper bag and he has African features (and he grew up in the sixties and seventies).
- Back in the early days of campaign (zomg 2 years ago), polls showed that black Americans preferred Hillary over Barack. Somehow, the idea of Americans choosing thought and familiarity over personal identity seemed too much for the punditocracy.
- In the last days of the election, pundits started talking about the "Bradley Effect", where supposedly, white Americans afraid of being called racist would lie to pollsters about voting for a black man. They were, it seems, wrong.
- And remember all that fear over his middle name being "Hussein"? People suddenly thought he was an Arab.
  John McCain: "That's not true. He's a decent man."
  - To be fair, the woman he was talking to didn't just say "he's an Arab" but also that she couldn't trust him because of the fact. Because Arabs can't possibly be decent men right?.
- I just find it interesting that Obama is basically a darker-skinned version of his Caucasian grandfather.◊
- Don't forget the Republicans darkening his skin tone in their political ads.
Wanda Sykes has a routine that every time the half-black half-Thai Tiger Woods wins a tournament, the media reports that his black heritage is smaller than they did before. She predicts that if he ever gets in serious legal trouble, all the headlines will be along the lines of "Black golfer arrested."
News anchor Soledad O'Brien said she went through this. And considers herself black, but was annoyed that whites were only comfortable with her for all the wrong reasons.
- She's EVERY woman!
Actress Jennifer Beals expressed great frustration over this saying, I'm either not white enough or not black enough. Although she was reluctant to admit her black heritage at first.
- In fact it was not until one of Jennifer's family members on her black side sent a picture of her black father and white mother to Ebony magazine that the word got out.
- There's also been some Epileptic Trees theory that once the "word got out" it stalled her career. Which is why she might have been reluctant to bring it up in the first place.
  - Of course, she owns it now; her character on The L Word is biracial and it's impossible to avoid the issue, since her half-sister, also a main character of the show, is played by the incomparable Pam Grier.
- When catching her partner up on an episode of "The L Word", this troper couldn't remember Beals' character's name and referred to her as "the black one". Her partner was confused, as he didn't previously realize she wasn't white.
Z100 radio host John Bell is very light skinned, and when he once explicitly mentioned that he's black a call quickly came in by someone who was surprised about it after seeing his picture on the show's website. He also says there that he'd like Denzel Washington to play him if a movie was made about him.
This troper didn't know Infidel Guy podcast host Reginald Finley was black until I saw a picture.
There are plenty of places ... in the Caribbean for example ... where there are layers and layers of this. History records that quite a few of the immigrants to the UK from the Caribbean were appalled to be described as 'black', having been several grades of colourism 'higher' back home.
- The old Code noir of the Caribbean plantation culture had over one hundred divisions, specifying exact percentages of blackness, with the less-black ones considered "higher-class".
  - The Spanish version of a similar code has names for most of those divisions, depending of their ascendancy.
Pre-Civil War American Southern plantation owners used to hold "Octoroon Balls" (sounds dirty!) (which were named after what one eighth-black people were called), where they would judge whether partially-black women were "white enough" to join "polite society". The fate of the losers was... ugh.
- In contrast, during the Spanish colonial domination, any non-white person who weren't slave and could amass enough money, could buy its "whiteness"... or, more accurately, the privileges of the white people and the legal right of being treated as "white", no matter what skin color or racial ascendant could have. Not that it wasn't controversial, to say the least. In Venezuela, there was the case of the Bejarano sisters, a trio of beautiful sisters of mixed race in the very spirit of this trope, who made a fortune thanks to their famed dessert-making abilities, and then, to the scandal of colonial society, bought their "white rights". Certain people of "high class" complained, and when the sisters tried to buy more privileges, those were denied because of their non-whiteness.
  - At least in New Spain/later Mexico, race wasn't as important as lineage and legitimacy. If your father was Spanish and your mother was black/Indian/mestiza/whatever but you were born within marriage bounds or legally recognized by your father as Spanish, you were Spanish and treated as such, even if you were as dark as you could be. There were no anti-miscegenation laws so the extremely small black minority disappeared almost completely as they mixed with everybody else. Its still elitism which isn't actually much better but is still a radical difference with the British colonies worth noticing.
- On an episode of Oprah during Tiger Woods' meteoric initial rise to national attention, there was considerable controversy after Tiger said that when he was a child, knowing he was of mixed heritage—having not only white and black, but Asian and Native American (American Indian) ancestry—led him to cobbling together a word for himself, "Cablinasian". Some black celebrities took offense to this, with one even citing the "one-drop" rule (that being, if you have one drop of black blood, you're black). It was noted on a follow-up episode discussing the issue and how it related to race in America that this was a rule invented by slavers to expand their potential "product base".
  - It's a pride thing. In the past, Blacks who could pass for White would disavow their past, their communities, and even their own family so they can join white society (the 50s Hollywood film "Imitation of Life" addresses this beautifully). Or to make themselves feel superior, they play up their White and Native American ancestry. Also, some Christian denominations during Slavery taught that Blacks were cursed by God to be slaves (The "Mark of Cain" and "Curse of Ham") and having even a drop of African blood condemned you to ~~Hell~~ servitude. Blacks switched that up and made having African ancestry a strength, something to be proud of. So someone stating they are not Black dredges up all that awful history, and is seen by certain Blacks as being ashamed of their own background. It's like the tension with certain Filipinos toward certain Filipino-Americans who play up their Chinese and Spanish ancestry, stating their part Chinese, part Spanish, and part Filipino.
  - In Brazil, many black people still disavow their ancestry and act in the white way, although it's slowly changing. slowly.
  - Should note that what's considered black and what's considered white is notably different in Brazil than, say, America. To the point of many Brazilians coming to America and find themselves being called a different race than they identify with.
  - Inverted in the Gatorade Focus commercials, in which the animators seem to have assiduously eradicated any trace of non-black features on animated!Tiger.
When Vanessa L. Williams became the first black Miss America, a number of observers noted that she had not only very light skin, but also a significant number of "Caucasian features".
- This troper did not know about Vanessa Williams prior to Ugly Betty. Sure enough when Wilhelmina referred to herself as black I was really surprised; I thought she was just tan.
  - Considering the sunbed addiction prevalent among fashion victims, this is utterly excusable.
Time Magazine caught a lot of flak for artificially darkening OJ Simpson's skin in the mugshot that ran on their cover. America: The Book lists the event as the day print media Jumped The Shark, and more specifically Time itself lost all the credibility it had been building for centuries.
- Back when you could actually get in trouble for "fauxtography", as opposed to it being par for the course.
Comedian Paul Mooney joked about these people being "Double Agents", and only choosing to be black when it's convenient for them.
It has been noted that skin creams that lighten your skin is sharply targeted towards blacks and Asians. And most of these creams are considered to be dangerous (physically, not just socially!).
- If darkening your skin with cream is alright, why shouldn't lightening be? The dangerous aspect though is unpleasant.
Similar to the Jennifer Beals situation Carol Channing hid this secret till her 2002 autobiography.
Since I was a child I heard older black people speak of Joseph Cotton, Acquanetta, and Dorothy Lamour.
- Acquanetta herself appeared on ''JET'' magazine. She was latter revealed to be black and Indian.
Ditto for Ava Gardner.
- Frank Sinatra's valet George Jacobs, who wrote about it in his book (Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra) claimed she admitted it to him. Apparently parts of her family (and father especially) were passing and very ashamed of it. Her pop was apparently over-racist to try and prove his "whiteness" even more. She told him she used to go to a black church and it made her feel more herself.
There has been quite a bit of controversy over Beyonce Knowles' various magazine covers, where the magazines have been accused of lightening her skin tone.
A lot of people, this troper included, didn't realize Jordin Sparks was black. More than a few people have argued she wouldn't have won American Idol had her ethnicity been more apparent.
- Yeah, like that honky Ruben Studdard only won because he was white.
- As mentioned above, ditto for Alicia Keys considering how unmainstream her genre is.
Americas Next Top Model has been accused.
Subverted with models like, Naomi Campbell, Roshumba Williams, and Alek Wek....Yaaay!!
Professional Wrestler turned movie star The Rock ran into this issue when he first heel turn. As part of said heel turn, The Rock joined a militant black pride group (the Nation of Domination, loosely based on the Nation of Islam) and his skin color suddenly darkened considerably◊ from its normal shade◊. The Rock, being well aware of and uncomfortable with some of the implications, had his character make both the heel turn and joining the Nation be more about fan disrespect than about color.
- This trope in relation to Dwayne Johnson was parodied in Family Guy, when the voiceover for the trailer to a movie starring him and Stewie shows confusion over what his ethnicity actually is. It then moves on to others, such as asking "Come to think of it, what the hell is Jessica Alba?"
  - Considering she can wear a blonde wig, but looks odd in it, someone with more natural melanin than some but no red pigments.
Australian historical example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generation. Part Aboriginal children were often taken away from their parents (using "child protection" as the excuse) and sent to orphanages or missions The lighter skinned ones could be adopted by white families and become part of white, mainstream society. The darker ones were sent to trained as domestic servants so they could be sent to work for white men and produce more lighter skinned kids.
- The "whiter" Aborigines were sometimes able to claim citizenship denied to their darker skinned counterparts.
- Also, around the same time, some Aborigines would claim to be of a different ethnicity (such as Maori or Indian, dark-skinned races that were "ranked" higher) as many laws only applied to Aborigines.
In South Africa under Apartheid, if you were "Coloured" (mixed), you were legally better off than Blacks— you could vote, though with significant restrictions, for example— but still not quite equal to Whites, and still subject to segregation and relocation.
Enjoy a photo[1] of Kim Kardashian edited for a magazine. Among her "improvements"? Even lighter skin.
Michael Jackson's gradually paling appearance from the mid-1980s onwards was the subject of much speculation that he was intentionally bleaching his skin. He explained in a 1993 interview that he has the skin disorder vitiligo, which destroys skin pigmentation. Still, combined with his plastic surgeries over the years, jokes are made about how he now resembles a white woman (at best).
Every now and then, the pages under Race Tropes show a banner ad for interracial dating site afroromance.com. Fair enough, except that the "black" girl in the photo looks like a white girl with a deep tan.

Anime And Manga

Somewhat strange case, considering anime is not exactly known for its racial diversity and wide assortment of skin colors to begin with, but in the manga version of Get Backers, Kudou Himiko was originally shown to have slightly darker skin than the rest of the cast. As the series progressed and gained a serious Art Evolution, her skin got darker and darker until, by the time the manga ended, she was closer in skin tone to black characters than the rest of the white cast. (Her race or ethnic background is never addressed, and her brother was drawn with a similar skin color.) The anime kept her at "slightly darker than the main cast", however, looking more like she just had a tan than she was of a different ethnicity than the main cast.

Blue With Shock

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