Unclear Description: But Not Too Black

But Not Too Black is a trope about colorism (Colorism is even a redirect), discrimination against dark-skinned and the elevation of light-skinned members of an ethnic group (often, but not always Black Americans). It affects media and casting a lot, and is very much Truth in Television. And That's Terrible.

Beyond that though, it's unclear what But Not Too Black is actually about. The name, image, and description all point to different things, and these issues have been pointed out on the discussion page going back years. Colorism also often plays out like a beauty standard, and many of our pages on beauty standards are YMMV, but this isn't.

There are a number of distinct, incompatible concepts covered by the page and examples that I think should be split.

1. In-Universe Colorism: A character suffers negative effects from their dark skin (teasing, self-esteem issues, discrimination) or positive effects from their light skin. This could include plotlines about characters "passing" as white.
2. Light-skinned characters overrepresented in media: A casting Trope in Aggregate that I've seen a lot of people comment on in real life. Doesn't have to affect the plot. Seems to fit the description the closest.
3. Blackness as an Informed Attribute: By analogy to But Not Too Gay, of which this title is a Snowclone. Strikes me as redundant with The Whitest Black Guy.
4. Adaptationally Light-Skinned: A character/real-life person or group of people is depicted as lighter skinned in an adaptation than they actually are. Portrayed in the page image, another one I've seen people comment on in real life. Sister trope to Adaptational Attractiveness and Race Lift.
5. Mixed-Race characters exist for any reason: How it's described on Characters and Casting. Plot-significant mixedness is already covered by Mixed Ancestry, and as written many of the examples are People Sit on Chairs, with no apparent meaning. Might be difficult to distinguish examples from 2 in practice.

Wick Check:

Checked 56 out of 720 wicks.

Wick check results: Examples were fairly split across a range of unrelated meanings, hammering in that the troper body has truly no idea what this trope is about. There was a fair amount of misuse for other tropes or examples that were just plain incomprehensible. By far the most common type of use was entries simply stating that a character was mixed race, which is meaningless without other context. If meaningful, this is redundant with Mixed Ancestry.

Proposal: disambiguate the page, and create new pages for 1 - Colorism, 2 - All Actors Are Light Skinned, and 3 - Adaptationally Paler. 2 is tricky being a Trope in Aggregate, but I think it could work if we do what was done for Always Identical Twins and require that the majority of Black characters in a work be light-skinned with no in-universe explanation.

Edited by naturalironist on Jul 9th 2021 at 2:04:59 PM

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

Opened.

Disambiguation does sound like a good idea.

Edited by Berrenta on Jul 9th 2021 at 1:12:41 PM

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I guess Disambiguation works

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

Disambig

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Sure for disambiguating and making those tropes.

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

Disambiguate it.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Do agree that this needs to be more focused as a trope but commenting on one wick I do have knowledge of. The Always Sunny example, as written, is missing context — the whole episode is a meta-commentary on popular sitcom tropes, and this particular quote is a joke about the kind of actors sitcoms see as "safe" to cast. It's probably closest to #2. I'd edit the example myself but that seems premature without figuring out what the trope is going to end up being.

And that brings me to my other reason to commenting, though: colorism is big part of #2 but not the only part — it's often about respectability politics. Maybe some overlap with #3 there.

Edited by tropette on Jul 9th 2021 at 2:31:29 AM

Yeah that's fair, I think light-skinned actors are also sometimes cast for Multiple Demographic Appeal to make a work more appealing to a white audience.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

Disambig

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Possible reason for "this character is biracial" usage is the title being close to But Not Too Foreign (that's "character is half-setting demographic, half-something exotic", ergo But Not Too Black is "character is half-setting demographic, half other usually-black race").

I think disambiguating to more focused tropes is a good idea.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jul 11th 2021 at 11:51:12 AM

I assumed this was meant to be a Discount Minority trope, where a work puts in a dark-skinned person to avoid Monochrome Casting without having to include an actual black person.

I think that's right, but it's unclear what that actually means in use. What does it mean to be "not an actual black person"? In the US, light-skinned black people are still considered Black. And if it's about "acting white", that's covered by The Whitest Black Guy.

Examples where the Token Minority is a fair-skinned black person would be covered by the proposed Light Skinned Casting trope.

Edited by naturalironist on Jul 12th 2021 at 3:11:14 PM

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

Or are you instead referring to people with really dark tans, or maybe other non-African ethnicities?

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Perhaps But Not Too Black should be split and disambiguated, but Colorism seems like too broad a concept to be a trope to me. Racism and Homophobia aren't tropes.

Yeah, that would be better.

Edited by rjd1922 on Jul 14th 2021 at 9:53:11 AM

Keet cleanup

Perhaps something like a counterpoint to the also terribly named But Not Too White ("light skin is unattractive/undesired"), so "dark skin is unattractive/undesired".

The misuse is probably because it's a snowclone of But Not Too Foreign (which, last time I checked, is used for characters that aren't 100% foreign, like a half-Korean for example), so many people think that But Not Too Black is The Same But More Specific ("character is half-black")

Number one fan of characters that appear only once and ultimately were a recurring character either in disguise or trying a new image.

Well, as it's currently defined, But Not Too Black is about media favouring light-skinned people, usually by deliberately using lighter-skinned black people when the situation calls for the work to have a black character (either because of the setting or because they simply want to include a Token Minority). Sheva Alomar from RE5 comes to mind—her skin is much lighter than the rest of the Africans in the setting (under certain lighting it hardly looks darker than Chris's) and is the only one of significance.

Edited by Adept on Jul 14th 2021 at 10:51:27 PM

I was responding to rjd's statement that "in universe colorism" sounded too broad. A suggestion for how to tighten the proposed suggestion.

I think making the colorism trope specifically about in-universe beauty standards could work. A sister trope to Curly Hair Is Ugly.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

Do we need a crowner, or...? I'm not sure where to go with this right now.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Single prop on disambig? Doesn't seem like anything else has really come up.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

I propose renaming this to indicate that it's about colorism (But Not Too Dark? or Light Skin Only? idk) and cleaning up misuse.

Darker Means Less Desirable?

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Considering this is a website about fiction, would people know that the word "dark" is referring to skin color and not the tone of a work's plot?

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Good point