Unclear Description: But Not Too Black

Yeah, I can see how it would cause confusion. Then, how about Dark Skin Stigma or Light Skin Favoritism?

Dark Skin Stigma is good.

Dark Skin Stigma

How about Melanin Stigma? Melanin is the pigment that determines one's skin colour.

Dark Skin Stigma has alliteration though.

The word melanin is too general/ambiguous. It's about the stigma around dark skin only, not just any melanin.

Melanin Stigma sounds more like the name of a supertrope to both this and But Not Too White (and maybe also Albinos Are Freaks, considering albinism causes a complete lack of pigmentation) instead of a name for just this trope.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 6th 2021 at 1:34:51 PM

Agreed. Dark Skin Stigma sounds like a fine and clear name specifically for this concept.

Edited by Piterpicher on Aug 7th 2021 at 12:20:05 PM

Let's not forget the problem is the vague usage of the trope for several colorism scenarios. I initially proposed "shame over dark skin" as a potential separate trope to catch in-universe colorism while we disambiguate the page. Which of the scenarios is Dark Skin Stigma going to cover? selkie's original proposition only said "rename and cleanup".

Isn't shame over dark skin part of the stigma? Any preference for light skin and prejudice against dark skin is just (In-Universe) colorism. Anything else would be misuse. I see a trope in the Adaptationally Paler concept, too. So, we can make another skin tone-related trope to catch some of the misuse, but not another similar colorism trope.

Again, I said it would not have been a similar trope while But Not Too Black continued to exist in its current form.

rjd: 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.
me: 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".

I suggested it while agreeing to the notion that But Not Too Black would be *disambiguated*^note or at least redirected to whatever new trope we make, because I agree with the OP that it is currently too broad.

Just renaming it to Dark Skin Stigma doesn't solve that problem by itself. Who is the stigma directed towards? In-universe characters? Actors trying out for POC roles? Performers whose skin is lightened? All of the above?

Edited by Synchronicity on Aug 7th 2021 at 1:18:02 PM

Well, if by "performers whose skin is lightened" you mean whitewashing, none of the examples in naturalironist's wick check talk about this (which I only skimmed it). I'm talking in relation to OP's wick check & findings. Though, it's still a subcategory of colorism that I prefer keeping as a part of Dark Skin Stigma because the rename suits it perfectly.

That said, I don't get the "actors trying out for POC roles" part. Like in relation to what? Actors being denied roles because they're too dark (i.e. Daniel Kaluuya)? The lack of dark skin representation in poc-centered media (i.e. In the Heights controversy)? That sentence comes off as vague to me.

The page image, for example. Kamala Harris for Vogue, for another example, because "not knowing how to style/light dark skin" is coming to light as an industry-wide problem.

Both. Casting colorism in general. I would think incidents like the former would lead to cases like the latter.

That's why I'm asking you what the scope of renaming But Not Too Black to Dark Skin Stigma would be, because colorism is really broad. What sort of examples would we be keeping, and which ones would we be removing?

Edited by Synchronicity on Aug 7th 2021 at 3:39:38 AM

A few general questions to nail the scope:

• Where is the line drawn? In other words, what wouldn't count?
• Would this be a Trope In Aggregate?
• If we do stick with the broad concept, could some ideas be split off as subtropes? And what existing tropes would already be subtropes?

I don't wanna like, keep holding the floor or bloating the thread, but since I was the one who proposed renaming the trope, I gotta respond to your question. I think it depends on whether "actors being denied roles because of their skin tone" is considered real-life examples or not (bc the trope is a NRLE one).

Anyway, I reconsidered my proposal. Now I'm thinking, maybe we should 1) disambiguate Colorism, 2) make Dark Skin Stigma / Hollywood Colorism for "In-Universe colorism + whitewashing real-life people" a trope, 3) make an Adaptationally Paler trope for "a character's skin tone gets depicted as lighter in an adaptation than they actually are". IDK about "lack of dark skin representation in poc-centered media" as a trope tho. Should it be part of Dark Skin Stigma or its own trope; I have no idea. It all depends on what others would decide.

Edited by selkies on Aug 7th 2021 at 12:41:47 PM

You know, I wonder if there might be merit to a Useful Notes page about colorism, what the reasons for it may be and the ways it can manifest.

That's not a bad idea. I definitely think it would work.

The Useful Notes page suggestion isn't mutually exclusive with the solutions I offered, right?

It seems like others are equally as lost as we're regarding what to do with this trope, which is why the discussion died even though we almost made some progress.

...Okay. Here goes me trying to back track through the thread and bring up every solution idea presented thus far:

• Create a Useful Notes page on Colorism.
• Disambiguate
• Create other tropes to fill some of the gaps and misuse points
• Rename

It looks like the biggest discourse right now is about what this trope actually covers, what it should cover, and what we can split off. Is that accurate?

Of course, not all of these options are mutually exclusive with each other. Regarding this page, I say we disambiguate it, then we copy & paste the analysis page into a colorism Useful Notes page for now.

The other tropes suggested, well, they'd need to be sent to TLP, thus requiring sponsors because there aren't that many examples for us to create a trope for them immediately. According to naturalironist's findings, there are 7 examples of In-Universe Colorism, 4 examples of Casting (with 2 being aversions), and 8 examples of Adaptationally Light-Skinned. Therefore, they need to grow first.

Also, is it crowner time?

Is Colorism a specific type of racism?

Um, yes, obviously.

More a sister issue than a sub-issue. Colorism also exists within racial groups, and while in some places you can draw a direct line from "racial aftereffects of colonialism or slavery" to "preference for pale skin and Eurocentric features", in others it exists independently (eg. China's preference for pale skin goes all the way back to the olden times), and other cases it is plays into both (eg. Crazy Rich Asians being made for a mainstream USA audience casting brown-skinned Asians as servants or scary guards).

Edited by Synchronicity on Aug 18th 2021 at 1:00:52 PM

Sure, but that was a general question with an obvious answer that doesn't help in fixing the trope's issues.

RN, we need to discuss its scope and consider the options suggested so far instead of explaining its nature and rehash discussions we already know.