I mean, gross. Look...She's just so...BLACK!
—Sir Mix-A-Lot, the intro to Baby Got Back.
"Beautiful black woman, I bet that bitch look better red"note
— Lil Wayne, "Right Above It"
Paint my face in your magazines
Make it look whiter than it seems
Paint me over with your dreams
Shove away my ethnicity
Make it look whiter than it seems
Paint me over with your dreams
Shove away my ethnicity
—Nelly Furtado, Powerless
Rogue: It was an accident!
Kevin Murphy: Your career, Halle Berry - just an accident of genetics!
When you watch this schmaltzy ad, you slowly come to the realization that the theme is, "If your epidermis isn't white enough, the man of your dreams will never love you."...Over the ad's next four installments the girl wins her man back thanks to her brand new pallor. Well, that and his new girlfriend was a total bitch...We'd like to think the antagonist tries to win him back by whitening her skin even more, and the two women end up bleaching back and forth until they both look like yetis.
"[Harry Reid] was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a "light-skinned" African American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," as he said privately."
—Game Change, page 37
"Possibly the first and only cliche in history I've wanted to bang, curly-haired black women are the preferred marketing tool to sell obscure telecom products and telephone services so long as their skin tone isn't too dark. She should be dark enough to score that hip diversity dollar, but not so dark as to scare away that heartland racist dollar."
—Maddox, The Best Page in the Universe
"According to Todd McFarlane, New Line basically told him he needed another white guy in a lead role, or the film would be stigmatized as a black movie and lose a potential audience share. So rather than sacrificing the male or female lead to whitewashing, he chose the best-friend character — which, funnily enough, adds a miscegenation element that arguably would offend racially prejudiced audiences even more than not having a white guy would."
Frozone: Wait. Is that supposed to be me? I'm white. They made me a white guy?
Mr. Incredible: No, you're black-ish...
Frozone: They made me a white guy!
Mr. Incredible: Maybe the prints faded. You're tan... ish.
—audio commentary for Mr. Incredible and Pals
Archer: What about Lana? She's black... ish.
Lana: "Ish"?
Archer: Well, what's the word for it, Lana? You flipped out when I used "quadroon"!
—Archer, "Diversity Hire"
"Why is it felt that the more diluted our traditionally African features become the more aesthetically acceptable we are considered? It was said in the 1960s and the sentiment seems to be forgotten, "Black is Beautiful." Wow, nearly 50 years later and is that now only meant for a specific shade?"
— Tameka J. Foster, "She's Pretty for a Dark-Skinned Girl."
"I am dark-skinned and bald, so I hate you, and I hate Jesus!"
— The Boondocks parodying Tyler Perry movies
"Harry Belafonte ain't black, Meathead! He's a good-lookin' white guy dipped in caramel!"
— Archie Bunker, All in the Family
"They said, 'If you was white, you'd be alright
If you was brown, stick around
But as you is black, oh brother,
Get back, get back, get back'"
If you was brown, stick around
But as you is black, oh brother,
Get back, get back, get back'"
— Big Bill Broonzy, "Black, Brown, and White" (1947)
(1947)