Misused: Latino Is Brown

It might be kind of interesting to have a trope for averted Phenotype Stereotype in general because it's so rare that it happens, especially if the work calls attention to their race/ethnicity despite this; but we don't need to keep the aversions here since they're just "trope doesn't happen", and it's more interesting as a common aversion of Phenotype Stereotype in general, at least to me. Maybe it'd be a Trope In Aggregate, maybe not, I don't know, It's come to my attention I might not fully understand what Tropes In Aggregate even are.

But I'm just spitballing, and that'd be a job for TLP anyway if it's even a tropeworthy concept.

I'm reminded of an ATT query from last year regarding aversions of All Abusers Are Male. (I've been having problems with ATT links lately, so not sure if this link works.) I commented that aversions would be Chairs, but I think what Septimus said in that thread is relevant here:

Edit: Also, the Real Life section of Latino Is Brown doesn't strike me as useful, since it's a list of people who sit on chairs, which is already a reason for many tropes being No Real Life Examples, Please! (the Too Common category).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 6th 2020 at 1:46:16 PM

Hm... if a character is an "averted" example of Phenotype Stereotype but the work still calls attention to it (like telling an a Scandinavian character 'I thought you'd be blonde', for a non-Latino example), isn't that just a lampshade of Phenotype Stereotype?

Ugh, yes... even if nothing comes out of this TRS attempt I just want all the real-life aversions gone.

Hooked!

Thanks!

To clarify: The "move single characters to Phenotype Stereotype" option refers to the trope in its current state. That would just leave the multiple-character examples mentioned previously.

Again: What to do with all the aversions?

I don't know, I think we need to talk about straight examples first. There's definitely a germ of a valid trope here, people outside Latin America really do tend to stereotype Latinos in general as having a certain phenotype.

A lot of people definitely assume that only mestizo latinos exist and that latino is a race. But I have never seen a work that actually addressed. In most if not all the examples on Latino Is Brown the belief that all latinos are brown/mestizo is never brought up in universe even when the work has white or black latino characters.

There are a *few* in the wick check, but they make up only a small percentage of examples.

Should we add a “retool to be more about said belief” to the crowner options, or is that too similar to the All X Are Y mentioned?

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 7th 2020 at 1:28:24 PM

My two cents as a brown-ish Latino — "All Latinos are Mestizo" wouldn't really be very informative, I think, given that there are plenty of light-skinned mestizos. The word only means "mixed race". Hell, my brother is fair-skinned and blue-eyed where I'm several degrees darker, and my sister-in-law, a blue-eyed freckled redhead, has siblings with fairly dark skin and jet-black hair. My point being, if skin color is the intent of the trope, the chosen name isn't very fitting, because mestizo doesn't inherently imply brown.

It's not about being informative about real life demographics. It's about being accurate about how the media represents latinos.

Then the trope's second sentence should probably be corrected, unless it's supposed to imply that black hair and brown skin is the Phenotype Stereotype for mestizo...^note Incidentally, I am from the Philippines, where the word means the opposite — clearly mixed-race and fair-skinned. Anyway, the retool and rename options currently are not winning out.

I am increasingly not sure if this trope is worth keeping in its current state. Currently, the 'move singular examples to Phenotype Stereotype' option is leading, which is something I agree with in any case, but that still leaves the question of what'll be left.

That's my point. "All Latinos Are Mestizo" doesn't tell me anything about what the trope is supposed to signify, phenotype-wise, because as notes "mestizo" can mean different things to different people. "Mestizo" covers such a wide umbrella of physical appearances (as is to be expected, nobody said the European-Native mix had to be 50:50 for the term to apply) that using it as a shorthand for a given physical appearance is fairly pointless, I think.

All Latinos Are Brown, then...? I don’t know how else to phrase the option of “all Latinos look a certain way”, which I increasingly feel is Phenotype Stereotype anyway.

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 14th 2020 at 5:05:46 AM

Solely defining this trope by skin color is a mistake. Yes, classical Latin 'moorish' usually meant dark skinned but in modern Spanish the word moreno means "dark hair and or skin", which is why Chavo Guerrero Jr dyed his hair blond as "Kerwin White", Ivelisse Velez and Salina de La Renta dyed their blonde hair darker, Eva Marie refused to be dyed blonde; there is a belief that rubios, weras or what have you are somehow less Latino. Guerrero also lightened his skin with makeup but Velez, De la Renta and Marie made no effort to tan(Velez has one on and off but that's incidental). The Latinas who already have "dark" skin like Destiny and La Morena are more comfortable with blonde hair but people playing up Latinx heritage generally want to have one or the other.

And being Latino is more narrow than being Latin, which is why designations like Latinx exist.

This is why I'm increasingly wanting to cut the trope, since it's just saying "all Latinos have a certain skin color". No one is denying that there are a wide range of phenotypes.

I do regret making the leading option, well, an option, since it doesn't state what exactly we'll be doing with what's left after the single examples are moved.

Latinos being a certain shade of hair and or skin is still valid though("trope worthy, to use this wiki's terms). While we could rename the page "All Latinos Are Moreno" to be more accurate, that would still be inaccurate, as there are many darker skinned people of African, and to a lesser extent Indian descent that are often ignored in media about Latinos for the same reason the peachy and pale people are(Jack Veneno is as black as anyone, kind of an elephant in the room with Dominican wrestling fans). The same reason the "appropriately" brown but "Asiatic" featured people are(Ayako Hamada, from Tokyo...Mexico!).

"Latinos are uniform" or such might be better, but Latino Is Brown does get the point across just fine. The description needs tweaking more than the page needs renaming or cutting. Like the addition of one work (hair) to the laconic patches that up.

If too many aversions are a problem(and I rarely see why that is a problem so long as there are enough examples to prove the trope does exist), it can be solved by simply adding more straight examples. Technically the Brazil example on Incredible Hulk isn't Latino is brown, given most Brazilians are of a different Latin American designation, but it gets the point across well enough. Are there any other examples of, I don't know, white man in Argentina, Mexico, Costa Rica?

Wiki policy on Averted Trope is that aversions should not be listed unless they are notable (ie. the trope is omnipresent). This is not omnipresent, so they should go regardless.

Edited by Synchronicity on May 3rd 2020 at 2:16:15 PM

That could be an issue less with the "trope" than with the users of the wiki. We keep hammering in There Is No Such Thing as Notability and then tell them No Aversions Unless Notable! The latter is not repeated with anywhere near as much frequency on the wiki and is kind of contradictory besides. English has nothing if not a large vocabulary, we can do better.

Besides that, not all of the "aversions" are actually aversions or consistently averted, thanks to Professional Wrestling having a Three Month Rule. I added clarification to the Zack Ryder and Lilian Garcia examples. Does anyone else want to check and see if that applies to anything else on the page? Otherwise hammering that aversion policy to users, especially entry pimps, might be the real way to keep the page clean.

Edited by IndirectActiveTransport on May 5th 2020 at 7:49:40 AM

We should be removing aversions too, right?

So the trope is not being cut or redefined then?

...

Er, you do realize that There Is No Such Thing as Notability is about works, right? Not examples?

Edited by WarJay77 on May 5th 2020 at 3:34:31 PM

Not everyone starts a Wiki Walk just because they see a Blue Link, especially not when the title seems self explanatory and the home page of the wiki told them every example is valid so long as it actually exists.

I recall the very word "notability" being a punchline, to the point there was some sort of game among the users every time someone tried to use it to argue a point, valid or otherwise.

But what do I know about the mindset of a wiki editor? If I was among those who added those aversions to Latino Is Brown would you take my statements more seriously? Perhaps if I acknowledged that some progress has been made(though I also think some missteps have been taken)?

All I'm saying is that you claimed a false interpretation of the Notability rule, which states only that any creative work that doesn't break P5 rules can be troped on the site- not that things like Aversions are worth troping if they don't have any interesting meaning. Most of the time, they're just "trope doesn't happen", which isn't worth mentioning.

In this case, aversions would make more sense if this was a Trope In Aggregate, but I'm not sure it is.

Does a trope in aggregate have to be universal across different cultures? I feel like that question may be relevant to this.