Token Minority Couple: Difference between revisions

[[File:tumblr_m34056s4ZE1r7x4hso1_500_6662tumblr m34056s4ZE1r7x4hso1 500 6662.png|frame|'Cuz blacks belong together.]]

'''Type B:''' Two minority characters are established independently of each other. If they have any interactions at all, it's as friends and nothing more. But then later seasons find them getting...friendlier, even though they have nothing in common beyond their race. It is [[Not a Subversion]] if the lovebirds are different minority races. If everyone else on the show is white except for a black and an Asian, and they fall in love with no subtlety or natural buildup, it's as straight an example as any other. This is because only two races matter in Hollywood: white and not white.

Another variant happens in the [[World of Funny Animals]], where everybody is a different anthropomorphic animal, but no matter [[Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism|how anthropomorphic they are]], only those of the same exact species will truly hook up. For example, Bob Kitty is the only cat in the show and has no love interests until Alice the cat shows up. This is less [[Fantastic Racism]] and more to avoid the potential [[Squick]] of an [[Interspecies Romance]].

It is unnecessary to list aversions, since that tends to mean rattling off the character's entire dating history.

* [[Lampshade|Lampshaded]]d in an issue of ''The [[New Mutants]]''. Dani tries hooking up Karma with a lesbian they meet at a coffeehouse, and Karma is offended on principle.

=== Film ===

=== [[Live Action TV]] ===

** A little more understandable given the time period in which the show was made, but this is done in ''[[Hogan's Heroes]]''. When a black woman turns out to have access to secret Nazi plans, she also turns out to have been the high school girlfriend of Kinchloe (the only black member of the group). They make out at the end of the episode.

* Subverted on ''[[Flash Forward 2009|Flash ForwardFlashForward]]''. Stan Wedeck, who is black, is accused by one of his adversaries of having had an extramarital affair. Later, we meet the woman in question, who is also black. This, along with the friendly way they greet each other when he visits her apartment, implies the accusation is true. But it turns out {{spoiler|the actual affair took place between the woman and the President of the United States, who is white. Stan merely helped cover it up.}}

** [[Star Trek: Voyager|Tuvok's]] wife also had a rather dark complexion. This could be a result of the show's creators realizing that the notoriously sunny, arid planet Vulcan would favor a darker skin tone - most times you see a Vulcan in Voyager or Enterprise, they at least have a decent tan.

* In ''[[Seventh7th Heaven]]'' Simon's friend Nigel says that there's a desirable girl in his class who could have picked anyone to be her boyfriend and she picked him. Come to find out that she's black like him.

* Season 8 of ''[[Degrassi]]'' has an episode where Connor, who's black, helps get KC and Clare, who are white, together. In gratitude the writers give him a black girl as admirer. It's like when Liberty (non-token black) is rejected by Sean but in the end she finds out that his black friend likes her.

* ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' seemed to be setting Derek Morgan up with a black woman who was involved in one of the cases, even though they didn't seem to have much chemistry, but she hasn't been seen for a while. It would be nice if the show would stop tiptoeing around things and just set him up with [[Techno Wizard|Garcia]] - they've been flirting pretty much since the show began.

* On ''[[ER]]'', Peter Benton's relationship with fellow surgeon Elizabeth Corday fizzled because actor Eriq [[La Salle]] didn't like what he felt were [[Unfortunate Implications]]--that—that his character had previously had lousy relationships with two other black women, yet now had a functional one with the white Elizabeth. Sure enough, the following season, a black female doctor was brought on to be his love interest, despite them having zero chemistry (but very similar personalities)

=== [[Western Animation]] ===

* Bumblebee from the ''[[Teen Titans (Animationanimation)|Teen Titans]]'' cartoon basically flirts with Cyborg in every episode she's in, despite the fact that the two never shared a romance in the comics.

** Also, they never technically have any "real" romance, though there's enough subtext to make it a [[Fan Preferred Pairing]]. Also, I think I read somewhere that she winds up with her usual love interest, Herald, in the ''[[Teen Titans Go (Comic Book)!|Teen Titans Go]]!'' comics. (Of course, ''he's'' black too...)

** Notably subverted in ''[[Teen Titans Go (Comic Book)!|Teen Titans Go]]!'' where Cyborg has a steady girlfriend, Sarah Simms, who was Caucasian. Yet, Bumblebee and Herald are implied to be going out later on as a nod toward their being married in mainstream DC comics.

* ''[[Winx Club (Animation)|Winx Club]]'''s Layla and her [[Ambiguously Brown]] fiancé Nabu. Layla was introduced in season two and Nabu late in season three, and it was established at their first meeting that they had a lot in common. But while Layla was an obvious fit into The Winx Club, Nabu didn't fit as easily into the boys' group, especially since he was the only non-Specialist. He wasn't even seen hanging out with them until season four, where he became {{spoiler|the first main character of the series to die for real}}.

* ''[[South Park]]'' [[Parodied|parodies]] [[Decon Recon Switch|and then reconstructs]] this trope--atrope—a black girl named Nicole moves to town, and racist Cartman immediately decides that she has to get together with [[Token Minority|Token]], previously the only black kid in school. At first Token won't even speak with her to avoid this trope, but eventually Cartman manipulates them to get together, only for Nicole to break up with Token when she misinterprets evidence of Cartman's plan to mean that Token was invoking this trope. Eventually Cartman manages to manipulate them ''back'' together, and the two decide that not dating over their shared race was just as bad as dating only because of their race.

==== Type B: ====

* The situation in Silver Age superhero teams with just one female member was often somewhat comparable, although here at least the token female had a choice. But what really were the odds that e. g. [[X-Men|Cyclops]] would fall in love with Marvel Girl, who was not only the only female X-Man, but also the only woman with whom he had any social contact at all due to the [[Married to Thethe Job|responsibilities of being the team leader]]?

* In ''[[X -Force|X-Statix]]'', the writers of the X-Statix movie felt it was more "appropriate" for the Anarchist to get together with Venus Dee Milo in the movie. While this is mainly so they can hold the [[Conflict Ball]] with her boyfriend the Orphan, it's implied that they got pushed together by [[Executive Meddling]] because they're both black.

=== Film ===

* In ''[[The Matrix]]'' films, there's a lot of this. Neo (white) ends up with Trinity (white), while Morpheus (black) only has one strongly implied relationship- Niobe (black), whose implied former love interest was Jason Locke (black). Link (black) is married to a black woman too, and Dozer's (black) widow is also black. Switch (white) with Apoch (white) in the first film too, and Mouse's (white) attraction attraction to his own fictional "ideal woman", the Woman in Red (white).

* Subverted in the 2000 adaptation of ''[[LovesLove's LaboursLabour's Lost]]''. While Maria and Dumaine are both played by black actors, they instead fall in love with Longaville and Katherine respectively (as the play has it), both of whom are played by white actors.

=== [[Live Action TV]] ===

** In the second season, Tina officially dumped Artie for Mike over the summer when they both worked at "Asian Camp". This was the beginning of both characters going from their race being incidental to [[Flanderization|it being all they ever talk about]].

* Mickey and Martha in ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'' were revealed out of nowhere to have gotten married in their final appearance. While their personalities do in fact make a good match for each other, the facts that they had a neglible amount of screentime together, both of them are black, and Martha dumped her white fiancé Tom offscreen make it look like this trope. Unintended, [[Unfortunate Implications]].

=== [[Professional Wrestling]] ===

* Nothing to do with [[Shipping]], but this principle also appears in [[Professional Wrestling]]: there is a maxim that, if a promotion features two black wrestlers, they will always either be in a tag team together or feuding against one another. Even in 2008, the (black) Shelton Benjamin was the man chosen to feud against the debuting (and so black he ''rapped'' his way to the ring) R-Truth.

** Granted, Shelton's own tag partner is white. Same with the Dudley Boyz/Team 3D

=== [[Real Life]] ===

* Some [[Fag Hag|Fag Hags]]s have an annoying habit of playing matchmaker to their gay friends ("You're gay? My cousin's gay, you guys should hang out!"), giving no regard to their personalities, interests, or physical tastes. Such attempts ''can'' work for the would-be couple, but are usually awkward at best and offensive at worst.

** Wasn't that also an episode of ''[[Sex and Thethe City]]''?

* Subverted outright in ''[[Girls Withwith Slingshots]]'', when the two known lesbians in the cast meet each other, find that they have nothing in common, try to make it work anyway, and it turns into a giant disaster when everyone finds out {{spoiler|1=Angel doesn't consider Thea her girlfriend, is cheating on her, and isn't taking precautions against STDs with either partner}}.

=== [[Western Animation]] ===

* Some episodes of ''[[Hey Arnold!]]!'' had the title character's [[Black Best Friend]], Gerald, paired off with another major minority character Phoebe, who's half-Japanese and half-white. Then again, it ''is'' a multiracial pairing so it could be something of a subversion...

** Likewise [[Bollywood Nerd|Baljeet]] (Indian) has had romantic interests in the form of his old childhood friend [[All Grown Up!|Mishti]] (also Indian) and [[Scout Out|Ginger]] (unspecified Asian}). He also seems to have a crush on Isabella, who is [[Informed Judaism|Jewish]] ''[[Twofer Token Minority|and]]'' Hispanic ([[But Not Too Foreign|not that you can tell either very easily]]). Apparently averted with Wendy, his love interest in the Christmas special, who seems to just be white. (And yes, he's quite the [[Kidanova]], isn't he?)

* In ''[[Braceface]]'', Brock (black) and Maria ([[Twofer Token Minority|half Asian, half Italian]]) hooks up in the second season.

* ''[[Young Justice (Animationanimation)|Young Justice]]'' has a subtle, sci-fi example when [[Superboy]] and [[Green-Skinned Space Babe|Miss Martian]], the two alien team members, hook up.

** In season two they've had an [[Off -Screen Breakup]], and now M'Gann is together with Lagoon Boy. Possibly unintentional, but they're both green non-humans. (If ''they'' break up, who wants to bet she hooks up with Beast Boy?)

* Jacobo (Hispanic) and Tasumi (Asian) on ''[[The Replacements (Animationanimation)|The Replacements]]''.

* Numbuh 4 (Austrailian) and Numbuh 3 (Japanese) on ''[[Codename: Kids Next Door]].''

** Then again, Sector V is a [[Five -Token Band]], so this may not really count.

[[Category:Token Minority Couple{{PAGENAME}}]]