Monochrome Casting/Playing With

Basic Trope: A TV show with a not very diverse cast.
 * Straight: Sally and Friends, a lighthearted sitcom, has an entirely white main cast.
 * Exaggerated: The series is many seasons long, and not one minority ever shows up. Even in the background.
 * Downplayed: The main cast of Sally and Friends is all white, but a few background and/or very minor characters are played by non-white actors.
 * Justified: The setting of the series is a city or region that is known for not being very ethnically diverse.
 * Alternately, the series is set in a time during severe segregation, so you wouldn't expect to see a bunch of white kids hanging out with one black guy.
 * Inverted: The main cast of Sally and Friends is a highly diverse Five Token Band, consisting of an African-American girl, an Asian girl, a Jewish boy, a Latino, an Indian girl, and the Token White guy in a wheelchair.
 * Subverted: Fawna joins the cast in the second season to be the Token Minority.
 * Double Subverted: But then Fawna falls victim to Chuck Cunningham Syndrome before season 3.
 * Parodied: An immigrant from Nigeria comes to town and is played by a very white actor.
 * Deconstructed: An American town becomes very concerned about their lack of diversity. Turns out it was set up during the segregation days and never blended.
 * Reconstructed: But the state they live in is 99% white, so a lack of minorities is not unusual. They get on with their lives in their middle class white suburb.
 * Zig Zagged: The cast is different every episode. Sometimes it's only one race. Sometimes it's a Five Token Band.
 * Averted: The cast is realistically diverse for the setting.
 * Enforced: The writer is racist.
 * Or, the executives simply want to aim for a certain demographic.
 * Lampshaded: The history teacher in Sally and Friends teaches her students about black civil rights leaders. None of the students can relate and end up falling asleep.
 * Invoked: See "Justfied".
 * Defied: The series is about accepting differences, such as race.
 * Discussed: "Why are we so...white?"
 * Conversed: "God, don't you hate how these sitcoms always have a cast that's either all white or all black? Maybe that made sense in the '60s, but today it's just ridiculous!"

Back to Monochrome Casting.