Media Notes / Deggans' Rule

Similar to The Bechdel Test, a narrative is Deggans compliant when it has:

1. At least two non-white human characters in the main cast...
2. ...in a show where race and ethnicity are not major themes.

If the socially dominant race in the country where the show was made is not white (say, in Japan), the first clause may need to be adjusted accordingly.

It's worth noting that Deggans' Rule doesn't precisely parallel the Bechdel Test; it requires that the characters in question be in the main cast, but the clause about conversation is dropped. Since it was originally proposed during a discussion of the Bechdel Test, this is almost certainly intentional.

This doesn't mean the series can't have a Very Special Episode about racism, as long as that's not the dominant theme of the show in general. The point of this rule is presenting people of color as well-rounded characters that are not solely defined by their race.

Shows that meet this requirement are more common than ones following the Bechdel Test. Many of them do it by being the kind of show with a Token White.

Obviously, the Deggans test is not applicable to works where human concepts of ethnicity aren't, such as Robots or A Bug's Life.

Named for St. Petersburg Times TV Critic Eric Deggans. Compare Five-Token Band.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Fullmetal Alchemist is based in Amestris, which is basically a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Central/Western Europe. In addition to white, ethnically Amestrian characters, we've got Xingese Lin, Lanfan, Mei, and Fuu; "black" Amestrians like Jerso and Paninya; and Ishvalan Major Miles and Scar. Also, if being ethnically Xerxian counts, we've also got Edward and Alphonse Elric, Hohenheim, and Father. Race, especially as it pertains to the Ishvalans, is significant, but issues of sovereignty and religion are mixed in with it. Nobody cares that Lin, Lanfan, Mei, and Fuu are Xingese. The only exception is a throw-away gag about passports.

Comic Books

• The original Harlem Heroes has an all African-American cast as the heroes with white characters tending to appear as opposing teams and villains. Since they are based on the Harlem Globetrotters, this makes a lot of sense.
• Runaways is about a group of teens fighting their evil parents. The original team has Alex (black) and Nico (Japanese-American). After Alex dies, it briefly fails the test until Victor (latino) and Xavian (skrull, but with a black human form) join.

Comic Strips

• Between Friends: Kim and her son, Danny, along with Maeve's co-worker Helen, are black. The strip is mostly about age-based and gender-based issues.
• For most of its run, Safe Havens has had a black protagonist and her family, eventually befriending a Hispanic and an Asian. There have been only a few vague hints of anyone noticing any difference.

Films — Animation

• Several movies in the Disney Animated Canon are Deggans compliant.
  • Aladdin has a Middle Eastern human cast, and is a fairly standard fantasy love story about class.
  • Mulan has a predominantly Chinese human cast, and is about war and gender roles.
  • The Emperor's New Groove has a native South American cast and is a zany buddy comedy involving transformation antics.
  • Lilo & Stitch has two native Hawaiian main characters and one black one, and is a movie about aliens and keeping families together.
  • The Princess and the Frog may or may not count. The characters never explicitly mention race, and Tiana and Charlotte seem to treat each other no differently because of it, but there is clearly a socioeconomic divide between the white and black Americans, as shown with the realtors, who don't care to sell property to people like Tiana.
  • Big Hero 6 has a cast of racially diverse scientists (covering half-Japanese, Korean, Afro-American, and Latina) and no one even brings it up. Most of their races are specifically known only because of Word of God.
  • Encanto features a Colombian cast, primarily a family with a variety of skin tones ranging from white-passing (Pepa) to light brown (Mirabel) to deep brown (Camilo, Isabela) to Afro-Latine (Felix, Antonio). The story does not bring up race at all, and is instead about the magic the family possesses, and how one of the youngest grandchildren feels alienated because she doesn't have magic.
• Dreamworks Animation:
  • Home (2015) has two prominent human characters, Tip (Black, of Barbados origin) and Lucy (brown; established to be Black in the TV series). The story focuses on Tip's journey to find Lucy after aliens invade Earth, and race is not a factor in the story. The only time skin colour is brought up is when Lucy is asking one of the aliens to help her find Tip, and mentions that Tip has "beautiful brown skin".
  • Abominable has a mainly Chinese human cast, and stars a teen girl, Yi, befriending a Yeti.
• Pixar films:
  • Coco stars a Mexican cast, mainly the protagonist Miguel, his great-grandmother Coco, and his grandmother/Coco's daughter, Elena. The story is about Miguel's passion for music leading him to the realm of the Dead and meeting a skeleton named Hector, whom he goes on an adventure with.
  • Soul stars Joe Gardner and Curley Baker (both Black), with Libba Gardner (Black) and Connie (Asian) also playing prominent roles. The story is about Joe getting his spirit separated from his body, and trying to get back into his original body before he runs out of time and his body dies.
  • Turning Red stars Mei Lee (Chinese), along with her mother Ming (Chinese) and friends Priya and Abby (Indian and Korean, respectively) who are bullied by Tyler (Blasian). The story is about Mei getting the ability to turn into a red panda, and learning to cope with it while raising money to attend her favourite boy band in concert. While said boy band are minor characters, they are also Deggans compliant; they consist of Robaire (Black), Tae Young (Korean), Aaron Z. (Blasian), Aaron T. (Ambiguously Brown), and Jesse (Token White).

Films — Live-Action

• Die Hard, an action film, has three prominent black characters—the villainous hacker, Theo, the heroic police officer, Al, and the Plucky Comic Relief, Argyle.
• Out of the seven human main characters in Little Shop of Horrors, three of them (who act as the Greek Chorus and occasionally interact with the others) are black. Race is mentioned in only one scene—the description of a Spear Carrier as an "old Chinese man."
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier has prominent heroic roles for black people Nick Fury and Sam "Falcon" Wilson.
  • Similarly, Iron Man 2 has prominent roles for black people Nick Fury and James "War Machine" Rhodes.
  • Captain America: Civil War has three: returning Sam and James as well as newcomer T'Challa.
  • Spider-Man: Homecoming has Peter's best friend Ned (Filipino) and his Love Interest Liz (half black).
  • Captain Marvel has Maria Rambeau and Nick Fury, who are both black.
  • Spider-Man: Far From Home has Ned (Filipino) and MJ (half black). Nick Fury is also in it, but he turns out to be a Skrull.
  • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings has a lot of Chinese characters like Shang-Chi, Katy, Xialing and Wenwu.
  • The main characters in Eternals are aliens, but several of them are played by non-white actors. Sersi's actress is Chinese, Kingo's actor is Pakistani, Ajak's actress is Mexican, Phastos' actor is black, Makkari's actress is half-black, half-Mexican and Gilgamesh' actor is Korean.
• The Matrix series. In the first film, the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar is fairly diverse, and later films show that this not only applies to Zion in general (including seemingly all levels of military and civilian administration), but every single other ship's crew. Even the Logos, the smallest ship in the fleet with a total of three crewmembers, is staffed by a white man, an Asian man, and a black woman.
• Ocean's Eleven, a heist movie, has the tiny Chinese acrobat Yen and the Black and Nerdy techie Basher.
• Pacific Rim has Japanese Mako Mori and black Stacker Pentecost. (Not "African-American", as he's from England.)
• Secrets & Lies Hortense and her best friend have a conversation about their mothers that also passes The Bechdel Test. The film does briefly mention Hortense's race when Cynthia initially doesn't think it's possible that Hortense could be her daughter. The rest of the film is all about Cynthia, Hortense and Cynthia's family.
• Sunshine has three Asian characters in a movie about a journey to save the sun from going out.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past follows the rule especially in the dystopian future segments, where the few surviving X-Men include Bishop and Storm (both black), Warpath (American Indian), and Blink (Asian in this incarnation). For the portions in the '60s, when interracial interaction was less popular, we see one unidentified black mutant and some Vietnamese officials.
• The Martian is a sci-fi movie about various people around the world rescuing an astronaut stranded on Mars. Characters that aren't white Americans include: Rick Martinez (Latino), Rich Purnell (African-American), Vincent Kapoor (half African, half Indian)^note The character in the book was Indian and the first choice was Indian actor Irrfan Khan. and Alex Vogel (German). The Chinese government has a significant part in funding the mission necessary to save the man, but don't feature as major characters.
• Love Actually is a Christmas-themed romantic comedy with an ensemble cast. Prominent characters include Peter (black), Karl (Ambiguously Brown but his actor is Brazilian) and Aurelia (Portuguese). Supporting characters include Annie the PM's assistant, Tony the DJ and Joanna Sam's crush - who are all black, and the last one is an American for added flavor. There's also a prominent American character Sarah amongst the British cast.
• Death Proof is an Affectionate Parody of B-movies. Three major characters - Jungle Julia, Abernathy and Kim - are played by black actresses. Supporting character Nate is played by an Indian-American actor. If one includes non-American characters, New Zealand stuntwoman Zoë Bell stars as herself.
• Sucker Punch is an escapist fantasy about girls in a mental hospital. The main villain Blue is Latino, Amber is Asian and Blondie is Ambiguously Brown^note her actress Vanessa Hudgens is of Irish, Native American, Filipino, Chinese and Spanish descent. There's also Madame Gorski, a Polish psychologist - but who's played by the American Carla Gugino.
• Star Wars:
  • Two members of the Power Trio introduced in The Force Awakens consist of Finn, who's black, and Poe, who's played by a Latino actor.
  • Rogue One is about the Rebel Alliance stealing the plans for the Death Star, and among the group of main characters are Cassian Andor (Latino), Saw Gerrera (black), Chirrut Îmwe, and Baze Malbus (both of whom are Asian).
• In Other Halves, two of the main cast are Asian, which makes sense, given that the film is about programmers in San Francisco.
• The Made-for-TV Movie The Mistle Tones features three non-white characters in its main cast, including the protagonist, and never mentions race.
• The Personal History of David Copperfield gives race lifts to several of its characters, including Indian-British Dev Patel as the title character, but is otherwise a faithful adaptation of the Dickens novel.
• The Old Guard, about a group of immortal soldiers, has Nile (a black woman) and Joe (whose place of origin is not specified, but the actor is of Tunisian descent) among the main group of immortals. There is also Copley, who in the film gets a Race Lift and is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Literature

• Animorphs had African-American Cassie and half-Hispanic Marco. A later book in the series mentions offhand that Jake's and Rachel's fathers are Jewish, meaning that the team is essentially half non-white, and the remaining two members are an alien and a Caucasian in the form of a bird.
• The Heroes of Olympus has 5 (of 9) non-white main charaters: Hazel (African-American), Frank (Chinese-Canadian), Leo (Latino), Piper (Cherokee) and Reyna (Puerto Rican). The book series is about demigods going on quests to save the world, so it isn't about race.
• One Perfectly Princess story, "Purple Princess Wins the Prize", mainly stars a Black girl, Isabel, and her family, particularly her annoying brothers. Her story is about trying to win a prize at school for performance.
• Remnants has Hispanic Mo'Steel and his mom, Olga, as well as half-African-American Yago, half-Chinese 2Face, African-American Noyze, and Hispanic Dr. Cohen among the main cast in the early books. A few more minorities are side characters, such as T.R., as well.
• Six of Crows is a heist novel set in a fantasy world. It has two non-white main characters: Jesper (black) and Inej (Ambiguously Brown).

Live-Action TV

• Homicide: Life on the Street had a large number of characters of color. Infact the two most lauded actors in the show, Andre Braugher (as Frank Pembleton) and Yaphet Kotto (as Lieutenant Giardello) - are black. ^note  Although a few episodes deal with race as a theme, the show itself is not centered around it. The decision to hire such a diverse cast was a) to realistically represent Baltimore Homicide and b) get access to talented actors who would not otherwise work on a TV show if not for the scarcity of work.
• Lost, for Michael and Walt, (black) Jin and Sun, (Korean) Sayid, (Arab) Eko, (Nigerian) Miles, (Asian) Ana-Lucia, (Latina) and Hurley (Latino). Michael and Jin's very early interactions involved race, but they got past the issue quickly and were soon having Han-Chewie interaction on a regular basis.
• Power Rangers regularly passes thanks to its use of the Five-Token Band, most stereotypically with one Asian character and one Black character in each cast. The few times they don't have those tend to be (but aren't always) when the core cast starts with a Power Trio instead - and even then at least one of the three is a minority, and there's still room for the Sixth Ranger to be non-white as well. Minorities aren't always Black or Asian, either: we've seen for example several Hispanics, two Australians (Kat and Xander) and a New Zealander (Chase), a Samoan (Shane), an Arab (Nick), two Indians (Jake and Ravi), assorted Human Aliens, and two Ambiguously Brown Rangers to whom regular ethnicities don't apply (Daggeron and Koda - one's from a magical realm and the other's a caveman). Plus two fake ethnicities (not counting how several casts are Fake Americans in the first place): Flynn is Scottish but played by a New Zealander and Antonio is a Mexican-American portrayed by a Thai-German.
• Scrubs, for Turk, (black) Carla (Dominican) and Laverne (black).
• The Middleman has Wendy Watson (Cuban) and Noser (Black). The rest of the cast is pretty white, though.
• Dexter starts off with Doakes (African-American), Angel and LaGuerta (both Cuban — sensible, given the show's set in Miami), and Masuka (Japanese-American). Later seasons get rid of Doakes, but add other non-white characters for varying amounts of time.
• Modern Family: Gloria, Manny, and Lily.
• Mortal Kombat: Conquest has the Asian Shang Tsung and Kung Lao, and the black Jade (not to mention a few one-shot characters). And this would be okay even with a mostly white cast, if the show wasn't set in ancient China.
• The American The Office, with Kelly, Stanley, Oscar, and Darryl.
• Parks and Recreation has Tom Haverford (Indian) and April Ludgate (half-Hispanic) throughout, with Ann Perkins (who is Ambiguously Brown and played by a half-Black, half-Jewish actress) in Seasons 1-6 and Donna Meagle (Black) in Seasons 6-7. Also, Donna was there from the beginning, with her role growing over time and being nearly a main cast member in Seasons 3-5; there's no doubt she's part of the Parks Department "gang" from fairly early on.
• Lampshaded in the NewsRadio episode, "Daydream," when Catherine, the only non-white member of the cast (and who the writers clearly realized by this point they had no idea how to write for) went into the break room for lunch, and was joined by a group of other African American - and at least one Asian - coworkers, where they talk about their day and about how nice it is to work in a place with so many "people of color in it." She then snaps out of her daydream as her blond-haired white actual coworkers ask if they can eat lunch with her, and immediately start talking about Friends.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has Detective Odafin "Fin" Tutuola, Dr. George Huang, and Dr. Melinda Warner. While some episodes of the series include race as a theme (when relevant to the crime of the week), the series itself is not about race. As of Season 15, out of the five main characters, two are Latino and one is black.
• Law & Order was compliant with this rule for the last fifteen seasons of its run: After Chris Noth was controversially sacked in 1995, he was replaced with Benjamin Bratt, and from that point forward, there have always been at least two minority characters on the show. One of these was always Lieutenant Anita Van Buren, who joined the 27th Precinct in 1993 and stayed until the end.
• Gilmore Girls (Lane and Michel).
• Stargate Atlantis has Teyla and Ford in season one and Teyla and Ronon from season two on. (Teyla and Ronon are Human Aliens, but they still count.) Additionally, the first season had Sergeant Bates and Dr. Grodin, both played by Ambiguously Brown actors.
• Firefly has Book and Zoe, who are both black. There are also the Tams, who are supposed to be half-Asian, although played by white actors. That stands in contrast to the ambiguous character of Inara Serra played by Hispanic Morena Baccarin. Kayley would have originally been Asian, but white Jewel Staite simply gave the best audition.
• FlashForward (2009) has has Dmitri and Stan in the main cast, plus Gough and Vreede who appear in most episodes despite not being starring.
• The West Wing fails at least in terms of its main cast. Although Martin Sheen is Hispanic rather than white, his character is white, leaving the only non-white character in the main cast as Charlie Young, until he is joined by Jimmy Smits in the last two seasons. If Jewish characters are considered non-Whites for purposes of the test, it does a little better thanks to Josh and Toby. Not to mention that there's just no way a show about American politics can be said to not be about race on some level, as racial issues reliably pop up every 3 or 4 episodes, and are central to the last two seasons. In terms of recurring characters it does pass; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Fitzwallace and National Security Adviser Nancy McNally are both black.
• The rebooted Battlestar Galactica had white, black, Asian, Indian and Latin American actors in a far-away setting where Europe, Africa, Asia, India and Latin America didn't actually exist. Although racism was a theme throughout the show, it somehow never had anything to do with the characters' skin tones.
• Heroes started out with DL, Hiro, Isaac, Micah, Mohinder, and Simone (and that's not counting recurring characters like Ando and the Haitian). Season 2 promoted Ando and introduced newbies Maya & Monica to the main cast...but after that the series, while still passing, started to get rid of non-white cast members. Season 4 barely features one (Mohinder) and ends in a way that could write out all three.
• Clueless had Dionne, Murray, and Sean.
• Ghostwriter had a predominately black, Salvadoran, Puerto Rican, and Asian cast throughout its run, with Lenni and Rob being the only major white members of the team.
• Community passes easily: of its nine main characters, only five are white (and at least two of them are members of non-racial minority groups). The remaining four consist of one Asian character (Chang), one middle-eastern character (Abed), and two black characters (Troy and Shirley). Even as the cast shuffles around in season 5, losing Troy, it still passes as it still has three.
• Generation 1 of Skins passes, with Anwar and Jal in the main cast.
• The Huxtables in The Cosby Show. The show actually received criticism among the Black community for making the characters' race not be an important factor in the show, portraying instead an upper-middle class family that happens to be black. The topic of race is rarely brought up.
• The title characters of Kenan & Kel (as well as the rest of Kenan's family) are black, and the show has a Token White. Mostly, the show is a buddy comedy about Zany Schemes and race is usually unimportant. The most focus it got was when Kenan realized he was not switched at birth with Kevin Rockmore because the other Rockmores were Asian.
• On psychological crime drama Perception (2012), Daniel's assistant, Max Lewicki, and his old friend/colleague, Paul, are both black. One episode is about race, but the rest of the show is not.
• Grimm features both black Hank and Asian Sgt. Wu. Interestingly, they are some of the few normal human regulars on the show, with the white Juliette being the only other one until season 4.
• Suits features both powerful executive Jessica Pearson, and the Love Interest Rachel Zane, who has a black father.
• Supernatural has a few episodes featuring Kevin Tran and his mother, such as "What's Up Tiger Mommy?" and a "A Little Slice Of Kevin", but generally fails. Even when they give Dean a mixed race love interest, the story line involves a racist ghost truck.
• In Castle, race comes up very rarely, if ever. Dr. Lanie Parrish (Black) and Detective Javier Esposito (Latino) star in the show, so it passes.
• Once Gwen's brother, Elyan, is added in the third season (they're both Ambiguously Brown), Merlin passes.
• The Walking Dead (2010) passed easily early in its first season with a large body of black and Hispanic characters in the main cast. By the end of the 6-episode first season, though, attrition had claimed all but two of the non-Caucasian characters (and a whole lot of Caucasian characters as well). In the second season, despite the quasi Locked Room Mystery nature of the season arc and the continuing body count rise, both non-Caucasians defied the Black Dude Dies First trope, and the third season saw the cast enlarged to include various non-Caucasians in various flavors of good guy, bad guy, and neutral. (As well as flavors of doomed, not doomed yet, and still running for their lives.)
• The cast of Grey's Anatomy is Deggans-compliant, with three African-Americans in the original cast, all in positions of authority (in fact, the only non-New Meat white character is Dr. McDreamy), and an Asian amongst the interns; it was noted as being more integrated than Real Life Seattle. However, race is occasionally an issue, so it may fail the other element of the test.
• New Girl has the east Indian Cece and the black Winston. During season 3, the original black roommate Coach (whom Winston replaced after the pilot due to the actor having a conflict) has joined the main cast as well.
• Orange Is the New Black is a show set in a woman's prison; the main character, her fiance, and ex-girlfriend are white, however there are lots of non-white characters with individual plotlines. It's especially notable in that it features a black trans woman actually played by a black trans woman.
• True Blood has two black characters in its main cast: cousins Lafayette and Tara. ^note While she did constantly accuse others of racism in the first season, this character trait was quietly dropped in the second This has one unfortunate downside though: at least two thirds of the show's recurring minority characters (not all of them black) are directly connected to them and primarily involved in their storylines, making the show feel a bit...segregated at times.
• In Brooklyn Nine-Nine, only three of the seven main characters are white. The rest are two black men (Sgt. Terry Jeffords and Captain Ray Holt, the latter of whom is also gay) and two Latina women (Rosa Diaz and Amy Santiago, the former of whom is also bisexual). Furthermore, if we extend "non-white" to Jewish characters, then Jake Peralta (who is also the primary character) arguably counts as well. Being an American police show, it has touched on race a few times (especially in its final season), but it's not really a primary theme of the show.
• Sleepy Hollow, very much. In addition to leads Nicole Beharie and Orlando Jones (both African-American), the show has multiple non-white recurring characters: John Cho (Korean-American), Lyndie Greenwood (Black Canadian), and Nicholas Gonzalez (Latino), for starters.
• Teen Wolf after Kira's introduction as a main character. Tyler Posey is half-Mexican while Arden Cho is Korean-American. The show is about supernatural teenagers. Also, while they were never credited as main characters, Seth Gilliam (Dr. Deaton) is black and Keahu Kahuanui (Danny) is Native Hawaiian, and both of them held very important, recurring roles in the series.
• The 100 has numerous main or regular recurring characters who are non-white or mixed race: male lead Bellamy Blake (Asian/Caucasian mixed), Thelonious Jaha (black), Raven Reyes (Latina), Lincoln (black), Monty Green (Asian), and Indra (black) as well as now-deceased Wells Jaha, Anya, and (to a lesser extent as a main character, albeit a minor with a major impact on the plot) Capt. Shumway. Countless background players or minor recurring characters are people of color or mixed race as well, with the idea that 100+ years into the post-apocalyptic future, what's left of the human race will have naturally intermingled. This is, however, an unspoken reality of the series, as skin color is only made a real issue when discussing the pasty whiteness of the Mountain Men, who've lived underground for generations (but still include people of color among them, if not in major roles).
• Star Trek manages to pass this test in every series despite being a generally white populated show, although it can sometimes depend on whether or not you count non-humans played by non-white actors. Likewise some of the minority characters are little more than advertised extras.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series has the humans Sulu (Asian) and Uhura (African). However, they were relatively minor characters, but not much more so than the white Scotty or Chekov, as most of the action was on the (all-white) main characters of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. It was certainly Fair for Its Day.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation features two black main cast members, LeVar Burton playing human Geordi Laforge and Michael Dorn playing Klingon Worf. Worf's early show portrayal as a one-dimensional violent simpleton warrants some Unfortunate Implications (although it helps that this is clearly due to him being a Klingon, and most Klingons are like that regardless of skin color), but he improves with the rest of the show as the series Growing the Beard.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has a black human lead in Benjamin Sisko. For the second minority, human Julian Bashir is played by the half-Sudanese Alexander Siddig. And again, the Klingon Worf is played by the African-American Michael Dorn.
  • Star Trek: Voyager has the Vulcan Tuvok, played by black Tim Russ, and the human Harry Kim, played by Asian Garret Wang. Kim, however, was a very minor character in the show, despite his official membership as part of the main cast, and may not 'count'.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise included the humans Hoshi Sato (Japanese) and Travis Mayweather (African). However, despite being part of the main cast, they were extraordinarily underused, especially past the first season, leading to some Unfortunate Implications as the rest of the cast is played by the much more often used white actors.
  • Star Trek: Discovery has black woman Michael Birnham as the Enterprise captain, with recurring character Philippa Georgiou, the former captain, who's a woman of East Asian ancestry (her Mirror version also becomes an antagonist/sometimes ally). The supporting characters include security chief Ellen Landry, played by Indo-Canadian Rekha Sharma, doctor Hugh Culber (played by Black Latino Wilson Cruz), doctor Tracy Pollard (a black woman), tactical officer Gen Rysh (a man of East Asian descent), operations officer Joann Owesekun (another black woman), communications officer R.A. Bruce (a black man), and Gray (a Posthumous Character who's a Trill played by Ian Alexander, an actor of partial East Asian descent).
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has the Chinese-American Agent May and the half-Chinese Skye. Later episodes gave more focus to the black character Raina, as well as adding two more, Triplett and Mack, to the cast, although the first transforms into a visible mutant and the second is killed by the same force. No one talks about race, except in certain situations such as Skye's heritage.
• The Flash (2014): Joe and Iris are black and Cisco is Hispanic. Race is typically ignored.
• Total Divas is a reality show about women wrestlers. The cast includes Cameron, Naomi and JoJo (all black, and Cameron is also half-Asian), the Bella Twins and Eva Marie (Latina) and Natalya and Summer Rae (white). JoJo is later dropped, to be replaced with another Latina Rosa Mendes - and Summer is dropped to be replaced with white Paige and black Alicia Fox. Race is never brought up at all.
• Galavant features a black sidekick and an Indian love interest for the main character in a musical comedy set in a pseudo-European medieval fantasy location.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): The episode "The Big Tall Wish", made in 1960, is arguably the first episode of an American TV series to pass this test. The episode is about a boxer who wins a fight because of a little boy's wish. The boxer and the little boy are both black, as is the majority of the cast, but the episode is not about race at all.
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has the Filipino Josh, half-black Heather, and Latina Valencia in the main cast, plus the Latino Hector and black Dr. Akopian as prominent supporting characters. While the show mentions race once in a while, it's mostly about mental illness and a deconstruction of romance tropes.
• The Good Place, a serialized sitcom about the afterlife, features Chidi, a Senegalese philosophy professor, Tahani, a Pakistani-British philanthropist, and Jianyu, a Taiwanese monk who is really an aspiring Filipino-American DJ named Jason among the main six characters.
• How to Get Away with Murder: Passes with the inclusion of Annalise, Nate, Wes, Michaela, Laurel, Oliver, Gabriel, and Tegan in the main cast. Race occasionally mentioned, though it's mostly a soap operatic mystery show.
• The Umbrella Academy: Has Allison (black), Diego (Latino), and Posthumous Character Ben (Asian) among the siblings, since the characters were adopted from around the world, as well as Cha-Cha (black), one of the people pursuing them. The show is about a dysfunctional family of superheroes and race isn't talked about.
• On What We Do in the Shadows (2019), one of the main vampires, Nandor, is Middle-Eastern, and his familiar, Guillermo, is Latino. The show is much more concerned about the fantastical dynamics between different types of vampires, humans, and other supernatural creatures than race.
• Night Court became one of the few '80s sitcoms to be Deggans-compliant starting in its fourth season when Bailiff Roz (black) was introduced to replace a succession of older (white) characters whose actresses kept dying on them. She appeared alongside court clerk Mac (black). Neither character was part of the original cast, which was all-white.
• Once Upon a Time: In season 1, Regina, the Evil Queen from Snow White, is played by a Latina actress. She is the major antagonist. In subsquent seasons, non-white characters appear as part of the story, recurring or not, e.g., Lancelot, Merlin and Guinevere (actors are non-white), Mulan (Jamie Chung, Korean, plays a Chinese character). Come season 7, the main cast retains Regina, and adds a Latina Cinderella (played by Dania Ramirez), her half-white, half-Latina daughter Lucy, and her friend Tiana (played by an African-American actor). Of course, being a fantasy series, race does not factor in the story at all, either in the real world segments, or in the fantasy ones.
• Unlike the movies and source material, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has characters of color as main characters, princess Disa, the Silvan Elf Arondir and Queen Miriel who goes through Race Lift.
• House of the Dragon features the first black Valyrians, the Velaryons.
• Ahsoka has Sabine, the Asian Deuteragonist, searching for Ezra, an Ambiguously Brown man played by a Middle Easterner. The protagonist herself is an orange Rubber-Forehead Alien who "reads as" colored due to being played by Rosario Dawson. Being Star Wars, the human characters don't really consider race as a factor in anything, and extraterrestrial prejudices (which don't come up in Ahsoka but do in other Star Wars titles) don't neatly map one-to-one on Earthling racial issues.

Video Games

• While the Fire Emblem series doesn't normally comply with this rule, Fire Emblem: Awakening does with the Ferox nation's (black) Khans, Basilio and Flavia. Its plot is also devoid of racial themes, except for one ensemble character with Fantastic Racism as part of her personality and back-story.
• Mass Effect is complicated, due to the sheer amount of racial and cultural intermingling that occurs in universe, making it difficult to discern a character's race by glance and leading to a fair number of ambiguously brown characters. However, this level of racial and cultural intermingling means racism is not only a non-issue, it's basically extinct. ^note Between humans, that is. Racism between species is very much present. To wit:
  • The first games has Ashley Williams (Ambiguously Brown, confirmed by Word of God to be "mostly Hispanic") and Kaiden Alenko (White but with non-Caucasian features, given name common amongst the Middle East, with a Ukrainian surname, and to be a biotic at his age he would have had to have been born in Singapore, however he is specifically mentioned in the third game to have been raised in Vancouver, Canada) as party members and has Donnel Udina (a perfect example of that aforementioned racial and cultural intermingling, having an Irish given name, a Russian surname but being North African by descent) and Captain (later Admiral) David Edward Anderson who is actually Afro-British but has lost his accent and thus just comes off as African-American.
  • Mass Effect 2 initially fails with this, what with Anderson and Udina being relegated to supporting roles and the only non-white member of your crew being Jacob Taylor, who is clearly African-American. However DLC adds in the Japanese Kasumi Goto and the game still has numerous non-white and ambiguously brown supporting characters. It's worth noting that the lack of racial diversity might have something to do with the increased number of important alien character in this game, with a generally decreased focus on humans overall. Kinda ironic considering you're now working for a human supremacist organisation...
  • Mass Effect 3 passes no issues, with the return of Anderson, Udina and either Kaiden or Ashley as major characters, plus the addition of the clearly Hispanic James Vega and Steve Cortez as well as British Indians Samantha Traynor and Maya Brooks and the villainous Kai Leng (Chinese/Russian).
  • The games also contain numerous minor but still important to their relevant sub-plot/mission characters like Fai Da and Emily Wong (both Chinese), Khalisah bint Sinan al-Jilani (judging by her name she most likely descends from various Islamic south east Asian ethnicities), Gianna Parasini (Italian/African), Rear Admiral Kahoku (Native Hawaiian) and others.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 passes with the African-American Sergeant Foley (voiced by Keith David) and the player character James Ramirez, who is Hispanic, making him the first confirmed non-white playable character in the series. Race of course never comes up as an issue, as like most Call of Duty games it's more about shooting Russians/terrorist in the face than racial issues.
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has a black main protagonist, CJ. His family and gang are also black, but the supporting cast beyond that is fairly diverse. The only time the subject of race is brought up is when his brother Sweet and sister Kendl argue over her dating a Latino, Caesar, but the relationship endures and Caesar becomes one of CJ's most loyal allies.
• All of the games in the Saints Row series does a rather good job of this. You have the series mainstays Johnny Gat and Pierce Washington, as well as a variety of other prominent nonwhite characters in each game who fight for your cause, including Lin, Dex, Zimos, Ben King, Asha Odekar, and Keith David. Race almost never comes up as an issue in the game.
• In Mortal Kombat, the majority of the Earthrealm fighters are non-white, with the majority being Asian.^note Edenian humans might appear to be Asian or black, but they're difficult to classify within the context of Edenia's races. Furthermore, four characters are black: Jax, his daughter Jacqui Briggs, Cyrax, and Kai; Nightwolf is Native American (albeit one who's painfully stereotypical); and Mavado is Hispanic.
• The Street Fighter series makes a point of picking fighters from around the world. As with Mortal Kombat, most of the non-white people are Asian people.
• Boat racing game Wave Race Blue Storm allows selection of eight racers from around the world, one of whom is African-English (Nigel Carver), one of whom is Latina (Serena del Mar), and two of whom are Japanese (Ryota and Akari Hayami).
• The two player characters in Solstice are black and East Asian.
• The Walking Dead (Telltale) follows Lee Everett and Clementine, both of whom are African-American. Their race is acknowledged but it's not the main focus of the story.
• The cast of Overwatch includes two Egyptians (Ana and Pharah), two Japanese (Genji and Hanzo), two Latinos (Reaper and Sombra) and one character each of Chinese (Mei), Korean (D.Va), Indian (Symmetra), and Brazilian (Lúcio) ancestry.

Webcomics

• Shortpacked! demonstrates and discusses the trope here. Note that aside from those two, we also have 2.5 Asian people in the main cast.
• Penny and Aggie features, among sparse recurring characters of color, the black Duane and Brandi and the half-Asian Sara in the main cast. The story is mostly about gender, sexuality, and high school drama.
• El Goonish Shive has in the main eight, two cousins, one of whom is full-Japanese and one of whom is half-Japanese. There's also a technically questionable example in Grace, who is a Half-Human Hybrid, whose human side is black. However, the prominent supporting character Greg is also black, and as of 2014, Elliot is dating another Asian character, Ashley. Between being about gender and sexuality, overcoming past traumas, and magical threats, it doesn't even touch upon race.
• Freefall has had a number of Ambiguously Brown humans, among them Niomi's family, the mayor, and Mr. Raibert. The artist, Mark Stanley, says he doesn't want to make the same mistake as The Jetsons, which seems to imply a past ethnic cleansing that never comes up.
• The Order of the Stick has dark-skinned protagonists Roy and Durkon, as well as the Asian-equivalent O-Chul and Lien joining the main cast in the last arc. On the occasions the comic does ever touch on race, it's in the Dungeons & Dragons sense of "species" (a term the game is now moving away from), not the Earth sense.

Web Original

• The Descendants features Kareem (Iranian) and Laurel (African American). If one wants to split hairs, you can add Alexis (described as Romani), and Warrick (Italian American).
• Worm initially fails, with the only non-white member of the main group being the African American Brian (aka Grue) unless you count the French-Canadian Alec. Later on Brian's little sister Aisha gains a more prominent role.

Western Animation

• As Told by Ginger has two black main characters: Miranda and Darren. The show is all about girls going through middle school and puberty.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: The main cast includes people based on Inuit, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Tibetans, and a few more. While there is antagonism between nations and personal conflicts, race is not brought up as an issue.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: Black girl (Numbuh Five, Abby) and Asian girl (Numbuh Three, Kuki) in the main cast, race is never mentioned at all.
• On Danny Phantom, both of Danny's human Romantic False Leads are non-white. Paulina is Hispanic and Valerie is black.
• The Fairly OddParents! has Black and Nerdy AJ, Asian Airhead Trixie, and eventually the south-Asian Sanjay.
• Fireman Sam features Ellie Phillips (black), Trevor Evans (black), Helen and Mandy Flood (Jamaican-Welsh; Mandy is biracial as her father is white), and Mrs. Chen and her daughter Lily (Chinese-Welsh). The series' main focus is on the rescue service in a small town saving the citizens from everyday disasters.
• Futurama, with Hermes Conrad (Jamaican) and Amy Wong (Chinese).
• Hey Arnold! has both Gerald (black) and Phoebe (half-Japanese) in the main cast of kids, as well as the prominent boarder Mr. Hyunh (Vietnamese immigrant). There are also a number of non-white recurring characters such as Maria (Hispanic), Harvey (black), Nadine (half-black), and the rest of Gerald's family. Mr. Hyunh's previous nationality is occasionally plot-important, but their races get brought up rarely if at all.
• Pelswick has both the black Sandra and the Asian Ace. The show was far more about disability than it was about race, and far more about learning lessons of the world as a young man than it was about disability.
• Postman Pat, as of its fifth season, features the Bains family, primarily Meera (Indian), and Amy (Black) as a core part of Greendale's population. Race is not a factor in the main plot, as it's mostly following the titular Pat on his post rounds, and the antics he gets up to along the way.
• Rugrats started out with Monochrome Casting, but eventually grew into following this rule with the fairly early addition of the African-American Susie Carmichael, followed much later by the addition of the Japanese-descended Kimi Watanabe-Finster, as well as her mother, Kira. Though Susie already had a fairly large family, all of her relatives are very minor characters.
• The Simpsons, though generally sparse on non-white characters, does feature Carl, Apu, Lou, and Dr. Hibbert prominently. Most other non-white characters are very minor.
• Total Drama and its Spin-Off Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race are very Deggans-compliant, as co-host Chef Hatchet and roughly a third of the contestants are non-white, as confirmed by the showrunners. This includes multiple Black people, Hispanics/Latinos, and Asian-Canadians, as well as an Aborigine (Jasmine), a Pacific Islander (Justin) and a First Nation person (Sky). Two of whom (Leshawna and Alejandro) treat their race as a very important part of their characters, but racism never explicitly comes up in the work.
• On The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, Sheen is Hispanic and Libby is black.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man passes easily, notably giving a Race Lift to many characters that were white in the comics. Liz Allan is now Hispanic, as is her brother (stepbrother in the comics) Mark. Likewise, police officer Jean DeWolffe is Native American (according to Word of God). Ned Leeds and Kenny "King Kong" McFarland also go from white to Asian (with names changed to Ned Lee and Kenny "King" Kong), while Raymond and Miles Warren are both Indian. Fancy Dan, Debra Whitman and Roderick Kingsley, all white in the comics, are now black.
• Superhero action show Young Justice (2010), with African-Atlantean Kaldur'ahm and half-Vietnamese Artemis, who were created especially for the show and Race Lifted, respectively. Artemis carries the majority of the first season's mysteries while Kaldur is team leader in season one. In season two, they get their own infiltration plots, while the most character focus goes to newcomer Jaime Reyes, since the big bads are from his self-titled comics. The show also adds in African-Americans Mal Duncan, Karen Beecher, and Virgil Hawkins, Japanese Asami "Sam" Koizumi, Native American Tye Longshadow, and Argentinian Eduardo Dorado, Jr.
• Class of 3000 had Sunny, Lil'D and Tamika (African-American) plus Kim and Kam (Japanese-American).
• Defenders of the Earth has Lothar and LJ (Afro-Caribbean) as well as Kshin (East Asian) among the regular cast. In addition, the Phantom's old friend, Chief Goran (African) is a recurring character in the series.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender has at least three characters of various non-white backgrounds among its five human leads, and the show doesn't mention race much at all.
• Zig-zagged with Samurai Jack. Despite being built on its lack of dialogue, the show boasts a diverse voice cast primarily consisting of black and Asian actors, the latter of whom are almost always the voice of any Asian characters in the show (Jack, ironically, is played by the black Phil Lamarr) with some episodes having predominantly or entirely nonwhite casts ("Jack's Sandals," "Young Jack In Africa"). The episode "Samurai vs. Samurai" features eleven straight minutes of combat and conversation between Jack and "Da Sa-Mo-Rai," a black man. However, most of the characters Jack faces who are played by actors of color are either monsters or robots, meaning they technically don't have a race per se; Aku, the only other reoccurring speaking role, is played by a celebrated Japanese actor, but is a monster created from pure concentrated evil.
• On The Harlem Globetrotters and its successor series, all of the main human characters except Granny are black basketball players.
• The Gary Coleman Show has at least three blacks among the mortal kids: Haggle, Spence and Tina. Chris may also qualify, but her ethnicity is ambiguous.
• The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants has the African-American George Beard from the original books, and fills out the cast with Erica and Jessica (also African-American) and Gooch (Japanese-American). Race is not mentioned in the stories.
• Amphibia is about a group of teenage girls who get teleported to a world of talking amphibians; two of the three human characters (Anne Boonchuy and Marcy Wu) are Asian-American, and season 3 also brings more focus to Anne's parents. Anne's Thai heritage is occasionally explored, but said heritage is always celebrated by the narrative and is never the center of any conflicts in the series.
• The Owl House is about Luz Noceda (an Afro-Latina girl) getting teleported to a magical realm populated by a humanoid Mage Species known as witches. Among the friends she meets in this realm are Augustus "Gus" Porter (black) and Willow Park (likely Asian, given she's voiced by half-Asian Tati Gabrielle, and Park is a common Korean surname). Season 2 also introduces the Ambiguously Brown Raine Whispers among the cast of characters.
• The Magic School Bus, a book series about science that was also adapted into a TV show, passes the Deggans Rule. Four of the students are of color: Tim and Keesha are black, Carlos is Hispanic, and Wanda is Chinese. The series also easily passes the Bechdel Test, as the female teacher (Ms. Frizzle) talks about science to her female students in every episode.
  • Spinoff animated series The Magic School Bus Rides Again replaces one of the white students with an Indian-Asian (Jyoti).
• Star Wars Rebels has the Ambiguously Brown Ezra as its main character, with the possibly-White, possibly-Ambiguously Brown Kanan as his mentor and the Asian girl Sabine as his best friend or Love Interest (he's definitely interested, at least at first; whether she later becomes interested and if his interest lasts or changes to platonic love is a matter of debate). The other members of the team are a Twi'lek, a Lasat, and a robot, but nobody mentions human races or even really Fantastic Racism.

---