Working name: White Bread And Black Brother
He was a short Hasidic Jew.
She fought a savage battle to stay alive in the ghetto!
He studied the Talmud at night."
A variation on the Odd Couple, especially popular in Buddy Pictures of The '70s and The '80s, where the contrast between the leads is black-and-white in more ways than one.
The white bread is the Straight Man of the duo.He's from a respectable middle-class or white-collar background, a stickler for rules, and has no real history of troublemaking. He's likely a Family Man, too. He takes his work seriously, possibly to the point of being The Stoic or The Killjoy when on the job, and doesn't take it well when someone tries to upend his precise routine. Exaggerations may make him awkward, nerdy, neurotic, or way less hip than he thinks he is.
The black brother, on the other hand, is the Wise Guy. He's a jive-talking, wisecracking Soul Brotha from the Wrong Side of the Tracks who's more cool, crude, casual, and culturally in-touch than the white bread character. He's defined by his Street Smarts (often in lieu of higher education), disdain for authority, and willingness to break the rules, possibly with a criminal past (in the Lovable Rogue sort of way). Exaggerations may make him a Leeroy Jenkins or the Plucky Comic Relief, but risk verging into racial stereotypes like the Scary Black Man or Uncle Tomfoolery.
Normally, these two people would never work alongside one another, but circumstances force them together. In a Buddy Cop scenario, the white bread is the By-the-Book Cop and the black brother is the Cowboy Cop or a Reformed Criminal. As they begrudgingly work together, debate whether To Be Lawful or Good, and learn to navigate each others' worlds, they succeed thanks to their combined skills, and possibly grow to become Heterosexual Life-Partners too. They often learn An Aesop by the end, with the white bread learning the necessity of bending the rules sometimes, and the black brother gaining some respect for authority.
This trope peaked in prominence due to several factors in 1970s Hollywood: the decline of Blaxploitation films, the shift from urban single-screen theaters to suburban multiplexes, and the failure of big-budget black-led movies like The Wiz. The studios' takeaway was "black leads can't turn a profit," so the conventional wisdom was to only cast black protagonists alongside white co-leads, and possibly relegate them to the Comedy Ghetto too. By the mid-1990s, it had increasingly become a Dead Horse Trope—the success of actors like Eddie Murphy demonstrated that black-led films were still viable, and the trope was increasingly being subverted or parodied to hell and back. Nowadays, it's very unlikely to see this played completely straight.
A subtrope of Odd Couple. Compare Wunza Plot, Straight Man and Wise Guy, Snobs Versus Slobs, Irishman and a Jew, Minority Police Officer, Token Black Friend, and Red Oni, Blue Oni.
Note: The difference in social backgrounds and attitudes is key to this trope. Do not simply list a duo where one member is white and one member is black.
(Indices: Always Male, Black Index, Comedic Relief Characters, Duo Tropes, Foil, Race Tropes, White Index)
Examples:
- One 2006 commercial for Twinings tea
features Stephen Fry (the face of the brand at the time) running a tea shop with a younger black American named Tyrone, chastising him for writing a slogan that Twinings' Earl Grey makes you "feel the zing in your ding-a-ling."
- 48 Hrs.: The Trope Codifier, spurring the rise of this trope's popularity in Buddy Cop films, as well as the buddy cop genre as a whole. Inspector Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) decides to Recruit The Criminal Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy) to help track down and stop Reggie's old criminal partner. Something of an Unbuilt case, though, as Jack is a hard-boiled Cowboy Cop, and the differences between him and Reggie are rarely Played for Laughs.
- Die Hard with a Vengeance: Subverted with Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) and John McClane (Bruce Willis). While Zeus is originally from the hood and has shades of Malcolm Xerox, he's a civilian and far more of a normal person compared to John McClane and his Cowboy Cop behavior.
- The Kentucky Fried Movie: Parodied in the fake trailer for "Cleopatra Schwarz," where an overly violent and sexual blaxploitation Action Girl (a parody of Cleopatra Jones) is married to a Nice Jewish Boy who's clearly not cut out for violence at all—until it shows him helping her subdue bad guys and fire machine guns.
- Inverted in the Lethal Weapon films, with the black Roger Murtaugh being a by-the-book Family Man and the white Martin Riggs being a near-suicidal loose cannon with nothing to lose. As the series goes on, the two's policing styles grow more similar, with Riggs becoming an honorary part of Murtaugh's family and Murtaugh becoming more willing to go outside his comfort zone.
- The Man: ATF Special Agent Vann (Samuel L. Jackson) accidentally ropes nerdy dental supply salesman Andy Fiddler (Eugene Levy) into his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the arms dealers who killed his partner.
- Men in Black: Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) is a cynical veteran of the Men in Black who recruits Agent J (Will Smith), a gung-ho New York cop, precisely because of his subversive attitude and outside-the-box mentality.
- Parodied in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, where Cary Elwes' traditionally refined Robin Hood is accompanied by Dave Chappelle's Ahchoo, a snapback cap and Jordans-wearing black man who speaks in modern slang and quotes Malcolm X.
- Played With in the Rush Hour films, with Jackie Chan's Inspector Lee taking the place of the white bread, acting polite and stoic when he's on the mission. Chris Tucker's Detective Carter is the black brother, being a wisecracking Motor Mouth who's despised by his supervisors for his recklessness.
- Tower Heist: In order to get revenge on a millionaire who defrauded him and his employees, apartment building manager Josh Kovaks (Ben Stiller) tracks down Slide (Eddie Murphy), a childhood friend who's since become a petty thief and carjacker, to plan a heist and steal the employees' money back.
- Trading Places: Wealthy New York stockbroker Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) and small-time con man Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) team up after they both have their lives upended by the machinations of the Duke brothers. Thanks to Winthorpe's financial acumen and Valentine's experience running cons, they pull off a scheme that leaves the Duke brothers bankrupt and themselves fabulously wealthy.
- Training Day: A subverted example. The rookie LAPD officer Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) is partnered for evaluation with Detective Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington), a corrupt and murderous Dirty Cop who patrols and terrorizes LA's hood. Alonzo forces Jake to participate in his crimes as Betrayal Insurance and tries to have Jake killed by a gang at the end of the night. However, Jake survives, and Alonzo ends up dead at the hands of the Russian mob.
- Robinson Crusoe and Friday are probably the Ur-Example. It should be noted that Friday was a native Caribnote in the original novel, but so many adaptations over the centuries have racelifted him as black that most people now think of him as such. Crusoe and Friday also share the traditional characteristics of this trope as a straight-laced, rather stodgy white man and his more flamboyant, exotic, and "ethnic" sidekick.
- The short-lived sitcom Listen Up starred Jason Alexander as an uptight white sports broadcaster alongside Malcolm-Jamal Warner as his younger and hipper cohost, a former NFL player turned commentator. It was loosely based on Pardon The Interruption, a real ESPN commentary show.
- Tenspeed and Brown Shoe: Lionel Whitney (Jeff Goldblum), a stockbroker who's obsessed with detective books, goes into the private investigation business alongside E.L. Turner (Ben Vereen), a former con artist who keeps coming up with get-rich-quick schemes. The former's almost naïve idealism and the latter's skill for subterfuge both help and hurt them throughout the series.
- Parodied in Concession with a fake advertisement for a movie titled The Black Guy, starring Chris Tucker as Cowboy Cop Tom Black and Bruce Willis as hardened ex-federal agent Alex White. "So when they're teamed up, the results are surely hilarious! And not racist at all!"
