White to Black to Something In Between, Yahoo! Style

I’m planning a letter to Yahoo! to ask why this Doonesbury character appeared and appears so much darker on its service than on the Universal Press Syndicate’s Uclick.com site. The character goes through, on Yahoo! at least, noticeable changes of race not seen on the Uclick site. On Sunday, Feb 19, the PTSD counselor talking to B.D. on both Uclick and Yahoo! looks white:

On Monday, Feb. 20, the Yahoo! Doonesbury shows a meant-to-be-black man with dark brown skin calling B.D. “bro”:








But on Uclick, though the counselor is clearly not dark brown, his skin tone is darker than on Sunday; he may not be black but he surely is not a white man. The “bro” seems meant to “signify” race regardless of his actual shade of brown:








By Tuesday, the counselor on both Yahoo! and Uclick is an off-white and stays that way for the rest of the week.

Yahoo:






Uclick.com:







What happened? Web color problems? Did someone at Yahoo! see “bro” and think the character wasn’t dark enough? Was it to make the skin match “bro”? Then why pull it back? And why was the character white on Sunday when first introduced then darkened with off-peach tones and an awkward “bro”? What did Trudeau intend? Where did the decisions occur?

The letter is in the works…….


Works Cited
Trudeau, Gary. “Doonesbury.” Cartoon. Uclick.com. 19 Feb. 2006. 26 Feb. 2006 [http://www.ucomics.com/doonesbury/2006/02/19/].
Trudeau, Gary. “Doonebury.” Cartoon. Uclick.com. 20 Feb. 2006. 26 Feb. 2006 [http://www.ucomics.com/doonesbury/2006/02/20/].
Trudeau, Gary. “Doonebury.” Cartoon. Uclick.com. 20 Feb. 2006. 26 Feb. 2006 [http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20060220/cx_db_uc/db20060220].
Trudeau, Gary. “Doonebury.” Cartoon. Uclick.com. 21 Feb. 2006. 26 Feb. 2006 [http://www.uclick.com/client/zzz/db/2006/02/21/].
Trudeau, Gary. “Doonebury.” Cartoon. Uclick.com. 21 Feb. 2006. 26 Feb. 2006 [http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20060221/cx_db_uc/db20060221].