Before anyone raises any “buts”, here’s a few things about this table:

To qualify, a “character” has to be a human-coded student with a detailed design not composed of bits recognizably belonging to other characters and with at least some hint as to their fairytale identity. Perhaps some on this list actually are only backgrounders, but if they fit this description, I’m willing to bet they aren’t. (Bobs & Buns technically lack the identity-bit, but meah.)

For space, I had to leave out “POC” after “light-skinned” and “dark-skinned”. Just pretend it’s there.

I do not claim this table is absolute truth. I acknowledge other people may make other choices on the division. I am aware of several alternative headcanons/theories regarding the racial identities of the characters. This table simply reflects how I read the cast and only exists to illustrate a point. I doubt that disagreement over who belongs where will alter a lot about it’s ability to do just that, especially since I think I’ve been generous to Ever After High’s representation potential.

There’s about three different ways light works in the webisodes, which gives some characters a pretty wide range of their exact skintone. I chose the icons randomly. I don’t think they are necessarily useful on their own to argue about who fits which column.

Though I’m principally focussing on skin color, that isn’t all there is to POC representation. Fashion style, hairtypes, facetypes, etc also could be used as distinguishing point. Thing is, EAH’s fashion styles uniformly are generic European, the hairstyles all fit Eurocentric acceptability, and the inherent deformity of the art style makes facetypes difficult to judge. There’s not much to say if I’d go by them, and whatever there is to say is a lot less in EAH’s favor anyway.

I am a light-skinned POC, so please don’t derail this by saying I hate light-skinned POC or don’t acknowledge them. Here’s the thing that makes me so furious about the lack of dark skin: especially with the art style chosen for EAH, light-skinned POC are safe choices. They qualify as representation, so that box can get checked, but they also don’t have to upset the white audience because they can also be read as white. Cerise, Hunter, Duchess, Melody – all of them have been vehemently denied to be POC by more fans than I wish to remember. And I’m not saying, dangerous as this confession may be because I know racists will latch on and don’t let go, they are definitely POC – just that they have things about them that make them easy to read as POC. Why should whiteness be the first pick? Of course, we’ve also seen the same happen to Lilly-Bo, Briar, and Cedar, so really, the denial of POC coding can always be made possible if you’re just racist enough, but it requires more overt racism that even the casual racists tend to recognize for what it is and reject.

When there’s so few dark-skinned characters around, so few characters that casual racism cannot deny, then there’s no value in light-skinned POC representation. Because the lack of dark skin discourages reading light skin as POC, since evidently POC aren’t really supposed to be around at all.

And I mean, lets take a look at this in terms of percentages. Remember when 14 months ago the first three webisodes were a representation disappointment and people tried to soothe the matter by asking for patience? Well, 14 months of patience, and the white cast has grown more than the POC cast both in absolute and relative terms. Meanwhile, the dark-skinned portion actually lost relative presence and on top of that, the dark-skinned portion relatively has more than twice as many “no role”-characters than either other group. My definition for “no role” is that a character (in a visual medium) has yet to be addressed by their name while taking part in a story’s narrative. Both Lilly-Bo and HoH may have defining scenes, but they aren’t named yet or haven’t yet done something that places them in the narrative.

And the two dark-skinned POC who are well off; Briar and Cedar… well, I’ve spoken about their terrible in-fiction treatment already, so I’ll talk about something else this time. Tokenism. See, Briar is one of the main four characters, but she gets worked out of the quartet or otherwise made irrelevant constantly. For instance, that Art Fair when four designers were asked to pick characters and design bags based on their traits? One designer chose Apple, another Madeline, another Raven, and the fourth picked Blondie. How quaint, I wonder what’s wrong with Briar to be replaced by Apple II, especially when Apple I already is present? Or how about thatbox of the first three books that has on its cover (at least, the one chosen as the marketed one) Apple, Raven, Madeline, and Cedar. No hating Cedar - she deserves all the attention she gets (and so much more than just that), but this is the token treatment; she’s made interchangeable with Briar; made an alternative source of brown Mattel can use to suggest EAH is totes not racist. And like, correct me if I’m wrong, but if the summaries are anything to go by, then Apple, Raven, and Madeline are a big deal in two of the books, and Cedar only in one. And don’t even get me started on Once Upon a Time. The least they could’ve done to make it all not this obvious would’ve been to pick that whitewashed art of Cerise over Ashlynn’s. But nooooooooo…..

Shitass SDCC 2014 booth comes very low on the list of things Ever After High has done/is doing wrong.