Basic Trope: A White Male Lead, a black male best friend, and a white female love interest (who is often the trio equivalent of The Smurfette Principle), with no black female character in sight.
- Straight:
- Bob is the White Male Lead, who has a black friend named Jeremy and a girlfriend named Christine.
- Bob is the white male lead, with his boyfriend Jeremy who is black, and their best friend is Christine.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is Blonde, Jeremy is a Jet Black Brunette, and Christine is the Fiery Redhead.
- The Geodesic Cast makes everybody in this world either a white man, a black man, or a white woman, no other groups of people exist.
- Bob is an All American Boy, Jeremy is a Token Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot, Christine is a Southern Belle.
- Downplayed:
- One of the members is mixed race.
- Christine is neither white nor black, she belongs to another race(s).
- Christine is a transwoman who used to be called Christopher.
- Justified: The show is set shortly after the racial segregation era, so most of the black women are the Mammy who still Stay in the Kitchen.
- Inverted:
- The show stars Alice as the White female lead, Jasmine as her black best friend, and Chris as her boyfriend.
- The show stars Alice as the Black female lead, Christine as her white female best friend, and Jeremy as her Black male love interest. No white man in sight.
- Everyone in the trio is only one race. Everyone else is thoroughly diverse, ethnically, socioeconomically, spiritually, grammatically...
- Subverted:
- Alice, a Black girl, is added to the team.
- The trio consists of Bob, Jeremy, and Chris, making the trio an all-male trio.
- Christine transitions into Chris, making the trio an all-male trio by technical terms.
- Bob and/or Jeremy undergo gender reassignment surgery, and now go by Alice and Jasmine respectively.
- Jeremy is or comes out as a nonbinary and/or transwoman, making the trio a Masculine, Feminine, Androgyne Trio.
- Double Subverted:
- And then Christine gets her kicked off of the team by manipulating the rest of the members into thinking that she has an "attitude problem", despite this being further from the truth. Despite this, Bob and Jeremy believe her, and before long, they go back to their original lineup.
- "Chris" is actually Christine in disguise, or it reveals later that Chris is actually a girl whose name is shorten from Christine.
- Alice and/or Jasmine either detransitions and reverts into Bob and Jeremy respectively, or these are just Drag Queen persona(s) of Bob and Jeremy.
- Alternatively, Jasmine quits the team after transition, and Another black male joins the team.
- Jeremy is a Wholesome Crossdresser, and is given Twofer Token Minority treatments in the series.
- Parodied:
- Bob and Jeremy are a duo who want a girl on their team, so they put up signs that say "We need a girl on our team, but she'd better be white."
- The trio is notorious for their misogynistic attitude. Any time a Black girl tries to join them, they are bluntly refused on the grounds that "we don't have any room for a Black girl on our team."
- Zig-Zagged:
- Alice, a Black girl, occasionally joins them from time to time with very few issues.
- The trio themselves identify as genderfluid.
- Averted:
- The trio is made up entirely one race, no other race in sight.
- The show is about non-human creatures such as animals, aliens, anthropomorphic objects, etc. No human in sight.
- Enforced:
- The execs insist on the main cast consisting of one white guy, one black guy and one white girl so the work won't be seen as racist or sexist. However, they draw the line at including a black girl because they think all black females have an attitude problem and don't think such a character will appeal to the target audience.
- The characters weren't originally written as one white guy, one black guy and one white girl, but Color Blind Casting was used and the casting happened to fall out like this.
- Lampshaded: "Isn't it weird that we don't have a Black woman on our team?" "Nah, it's for the best, she'd just have an attitude all the time." "Don't be racist, Bob."
- Invoked: It USED to be Bob, Jeremy, and Alice until Bob kicked Alice off the team and replaced her with Christine.
- Exploited: Alice and Lucy use the fact that Bob, Jeremy, and Christine don't like Black women to turn the village against them. Because of their misogynoir, they are no longer called upon for missions or adventures and the peasants put their trust in Alice and Lucy instead.
- Defied: "You know what would make our team TRULY balanced?" Christine asks. "Having a Black girl. Let's add Alice to the team."
- Discussed: See Lampshaded above.
- Conversed: "I HATE that these shows always have a white man, a Black man, and a white woman in the main cast and then just stop there, pretending that this is diverse. Like, hello? What about the Black woman? Why are we always forgotten and left in the dark?" "Easy, because they don't want to go through all the 'trouble' of representing someone who is neither white nor male and is stereotyped as being overly rude and aggressive. Plus, deep down they don't truly want diversity, they just want to pretend to be that way while still maintaining that there's always more white people than Black people and more men than women."
- "Alice was all over the source material leaked on Tumblr, not to mention the beta trailers, too. But suddenly, she's been removed from the work. It's as if she never existed." "Hmmm, I wonder why..."
- Implied: Lucy is a Black girl who refuses to join the group of Bob, Jeremy, and Christine.
- Deconstructed: All three members of the group have deep-rooted sexism and racism against Black women despite wanting to believe they're for equality, which is why their group is set up the way it is. Once these issues come to the forefront, the citizens stop worshipping them and begin to see them as hateful hypocrites, no longer calling upon them to save the day.
- Reconstructed: The group mends their ways and overcomes their internalized misogynoir, even hiring Tasmin to be not just a member of the group, but anointing her as their leader, not out of positive discrimination, but because she genuinely is better at that sort of thing than Bob is. They gain the public's trust and, even better, give little Black girls in the village heroes that look like them to look up to as well! They do much better(both publicity-wise and fighting-dragons wise) as a result, and are happier for it.
Back to Token Trio, and don't ask where the Black woman has gone. She was never there to begin with.
