History Main / PeopleOfHairColor

* In ''Fullmetal Alchemist'', the Ishbalans have grey hair and red eyes, as well as dark skin. Other races in the series tend also to have a common hair and/or eye colour, but not quite to the same extent as the Ishbalans.

* In AiNoKusabi's city of Tanagura, dark-haired humans are discriminated against, unable to attain citizenship and referred to as "mongrels". The "Blondies" are the social elite.

In all too many works, however, the races are absolutely uniform, living in an ethnic PatchworkMap. Even at the borders, [[HalfBreed half-breeds]] are unusual and physically distinctive. PhenotypeStereotype usually prevails: BlueEyes for blonds, GreenEyes for redheads, GrayEyes or BrownEyes for dark-haired. Furthermore, the physical appearances are also used as a short hand for PlanetOfHats traits.

There is a certain amount of TruthInTelevision here. Before widespread genetic diversity, with people [[IfYouKnowWhatIMean meeting]] and [[MixedMarriage mixing]] between different countries or continents, the traits of a single tribe or village or other group of people were often common across the entire population. One group of people, who haven't been mixing with outsiders, will generally share the same general appearance. It's part of why, for instance, there are two main stereotypical depictions of Irish people, the 'black' Irish, like Colin Farrell, and the 'red' Irish, like Colm Meaney (Miles O'Brien from ''StarTrek''), or how people from countries such as China, Japan and Korea have black hair and dark eyes.

* In ''WakeTheSleeper'', [[http://wakethesleepers.com/comics/57 fair hair marks out a distinctive race.]]

* In ''DoctorWho'', the two races on Skaro seem to be defined by hair colour - the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy warrior-race]] Thals are uniformly blond (mostly straight), and the scientific Kaleds have brown hair (mostly curly).

* In ''DoctorWho'', the two races on Skaro seem to be defined by hair colour - the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy warrior-race]] Thals are uniformly blond, and the scientific Kaleds have brown hair.

* Long-after-the-fact depictions of the Saxons and the Normans after the conquest make the Saxons blond and the Normans dark-haired. RobinHood is typically blond; when Maid Marian is a Norman, as in ''TheAdventuresOfRobinHood'', she is dark-haired.

** One of the whole points of this series was to avert the tropes of fantasy being full of white people. The skin colors in Earthsea are more representative, in numbers, of how humanity is in the real world. That is, white people are a minority.

* [[DungeonsAndDragons Dungeons & Dragons]] seems to take yet another cue from Tolkien here. The various elf "subraces" (including the distinct Drow) have hair color and skin tone determined by their elven ethnicity (with a wider range of pigments than humans). Conversely, humans in the D&D universe seem much more integrated and less ethnically homogenized.

* In Robert E. Howard's ''ConanTheBarbarian'' universe, the barbarians of the north are divided into the Aesir, who are blond; the Vanir, who have red hair, and the Cimmerians, who have dark hair. Howard had a whole essay on the various human races of Hyboria and how they got to be where they are in the story in question.

* A {{Vocaloid}} song series titled ''The Story of Evil'' makes several mentions of the Green Country, the people's defining aspect being thick green hair.

* Similar to ''FinalFantasyI'', this occurred in the first-generation ''{{Pokemon}}'' games to some extent. Yellow had it so that each town was the color of its name (as all of the towns were named after colors). This also happened to the black-and-white Red and Blue, but only when played on Pokemon Stadium; on colorized handhelds, the entire game was made either red or blue, depending on the version.

There is a certain amount of TruthInTelevision here. Before widespread genetic diversity, with people [[IfYouKnowWhatIMean meeting]] and [[MixedMarriage mixing]] between different countries or continents, the traits of a single tribe or village or other group of people were often common across the entire population. One group of people, who haven't been mixing with outsiders, will generally share the same general appearance. It's part of why, for instance, there are two main stereotypical depictions of Irish people, the 'black' Irish, like Colin Farrell, and the 'red' Irish, like Colm Meaney (Miles O'Brien from ''StarTrek''), or how northern Europeans like those from Sweden, Norway, etc., are tall with blond hair (Dolph Lundgren being an example of this stereotype).

* AaronAllston's ''Doc Sidhe'' has three divisions of [[OurElvesAreDifferent people]] on the Fair World: light (blond whites), dark (dark-haired whites), and dusky (blacks, Asians, Native Americans, etc.) That's right; the difference in hair color among whites is considered more significant than the differences in skin color among the duskies.

* In the {{Ravenloft}} novel ''Carnival of Fear'', the circus freaks eventually leave the city of l'Morai to stew in its own FantasticRacism. Denied genuine human oddities to play AllOfTheOtherReindeer Games with, they are implied to have turned on one another: in the epilogue, a boy with ''black hair'' is shown being chased and taunted by a gang of blond youths, as if his hair color were a grotesque deformity.

** The Mystara setting's ''Dawn of the Empires'' boxed set explored this trope a good deal, with humans from different regions of imperial Thyatis and Alphatia having distinctive ethnic phenotypes, as well as cultural quirks. Those ancient Alphatians who immigrated from another world included both pale-skinned and copper-skinned ethnic stock, with intolerant subgoups within each of these choosing to remain "pure" and not marry the other; the majority of Alphatians, however, consider ethnic bigotry secondary to anti-Muggle FantasticRacism. Thyatis, and its former territory of Karameikos, subvert this trope by being host to many ethnically-mixed families.

In all too many works, however, the races are absolutely uniform, living in an ethnic PatchworkMap. Even at the borders, [[HalfBreed half-breeds]] are unusual and physically distinctive. Furthermore, the physical appearances are also used as a short hand for PlanetOfHats traits.

[[AC:RealLife]]
* The pirate Bartholomew Roberts, or "Black Bart", was so named because his hair was dark. He himself was a (white) Welshman.