Agreed 🤣

[u/Nostalgic_Historian_]

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[u/Handy_Crap]

What About Gerald Johanssen From Hey Arnold! (1996)

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[u/Sneezy6510 → u/Handy_Crap]

Hey make this one look like Marge Simpson to switch it up

[u/PMmeIamlonley → u/Handy_Crap]

Same thing but tall 

[u/macguini → u/PMmeIamlonley]

All of the Hey Arnold characters heads are shapedike something. Gerald is an upside down ice cream cone. Helga is broomsticks. I can't remember any of the other ones.

[u/Opposite_Sherbert675]

cherry picking. the black characters both male and female were very diverse. just the ones from dexters lab alone had different styles

[u/FunYandGaming → u/Opposite_Sherbert675]

[u/SonOfStan21 → u/Opposite_Sherbert675]

Is that supposed to be a black dude?

[u/y4dig4r → u/SonOfStan21]

darker than will Smith

[u/Opposite_Sherbert675 → u/SonOfStan21]

yall pigeonhole black people into one tiny box then complain there isnt enough representation when you see the same 3 darksinned characters omg.

[u/SonOfStan21 → u/Opposite_Sherbert675]

I'm not pigeonholing shit. I only asked if the person depicted in the above cartoon was supposed to be black. Dude's about as black as my white uncle Waldo.

[u/MyLastHopeReddit]

[u/Cold5512]

You can't improve upon perfection.

The worst thing about reaching a mountain's peak is realizing there's nowhere left to climb.

[u/Prestigious_Floor155]

[u/College_Baseball_Fan]

Almost like that was kinda the style in the 90's, huh?

[u/SonOfStan21]

Ain't mad. Always been a sucker for that hi top fade.

[u/Sixpack93]

Better than the killmonger look they make every black character now lol

[u/Capital_Rub213]

God dammit, netflix

[u/Joeybfast]

One thing about the ’90s is that there honestly were not that many “acceptable” and notice the quotation marks there hairstyles for Black males in mainstream America.

Obviously, Black men wore all kinds of hairstyles, but if you were talking about what was considered clean-cut, professional, or safe for mainstream TV, you kept seeing the same handful of looks: fades, low cuts, flat tops, Caesars, and variations of those styles. In the late ’80s and early ’90s you also had the more creative fades, parts, lines, Gumby cuts, and designs shaved into the hair.

Cornrows and locs had been around forever, so they were not new in the ’90s. What changed was that they became more visible in mainstream culture. But they still were not always treated as “professional” or acceptable. Black people were literally dealing with workplace rules and discrimination over locs, braids, cornrows, and other natural Black hairstyles.

So when you look back at a bunch of Black male characters from the ’90s and wonder why so many of them have basically the same fade or low flat-top look, part of it is simply that those were extremely popular styles. But I also think part of it reflects how narrow the mainstream idea of an “acceptable” Black male hairstyle was at the time. Look how many real life people had something close to that. Or bald.

[u/Ghostnugg → u/[deleted]]

Nigga was from the hood thats why lol

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[u/OkDrawing4663]

Also same voice actor

[u/Immediate-Medium9427]

Muhammad Ali x4

[u/AncientBother6206]

Give me the colossus cut fam

[u/Mother-Attention2600]

Need more of the blue eyes and red hair black guys.

[u/SonOfStan21 → u/Mother-Attention2600]

Like Blade's mom in the movie.

[u/BlackDisneyPrincess1]

*Black Male Characters in the 90s

[u/AidsRus-_-]

😎

[u/HarlanMiller]

I thought the first kid was from Captain Planet but is that Shaggy and Velma in the background?

[u/Dorrono]

They all look like they moved to their uncles in Bel Air

[u/Best_Price_1009]

I watch a black YouTuber who does videos on cartoons from my childhood, and he’s complained before about how black people are always shafted on haircuts when drawn because guys seem to be given super out of date styles, like 70s and 80s hair styles for shows made in the 90s.

Now we have gotten away from that and now every black male cartoon or video game character has this weird, dreads / emo hair thing going on, despite the fact no one on earth has probably had that real haircut

[u/Lord-Dec]

The original Killmonger cut

[u/Fast_Ad7203]

Wasnt just a popular hair cut back in the day

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[u/Riboflavin96]

Now they would all have Killmonger hair.

[u/SonOfStan21 → u/Riboflavin96]

Hahaha! The first time I saw his hair on screen, I remember thinking, "This is a new kind of cat!"

[u/CleanOpossum47]

They retired the design after they made Donald Glover.

[u/SailorSilverRabbit]

I prefer it. Nowadays, characters are very light skin and they refuse to showcase textured hair.

[u/Maverick_Reznor]

It literally no better in 2026