Chris asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

Are there any Black folx in your books? A friend asked me this recently, and I couldn't think of any characters with dark skin, or who one would say is Black.

Lois McMaster Bujold
A lot of the galactics in the Vorkosigan series are mixed races of several varieties, depending on founder effects. Many are undescribed, which I expect doesn't count, but there was Sergeant Chodak of the Dendarii Mercenaries, and that diplomat and wives whom Miles met in London, some quaddies, at least one haut lady of the Star Creche, and a Tau Cetan captain, thought of as as typical for his planet, who were. Also the Jewel sibling, Jet. Some residents of Jackson's Whole run heavily to a dark South Asian look, ferex Shiv Arqua.

Fiametta Beneforte, heroine of The Spirit Ring is most obviously what moderns would call black, or mixed race if you prefer, with a black Ethiopian mother (or grandparents, as she was born in alternate Brindisi, Italy) and an Italian father. Her skin color is described as "walnut".

Technically, the Barrayarans are all pretty much mixed race, but with 600 years for a relatively small founder population to blenderize, any original phenotypic group distinctions don't much survive. But there are reasons so many Barrayarans are described as having a Mediterranean look -- another population that has had generations to mix it up.

For the more advanced galactics who have had centuries to mix 'n match genes ala carte, whose skin colors would be whatever their parents chose for them including red, blue, or green, one would need to think carefully about what one means by assigning 21st C. terms. See: Jet and sibs. And all the many different gene-engineered people. How many arms do you have? How many sexes? Can you breathe underwater? Are you a hauntingly beautiful post-human with an extra set of chromosomes? And so on.

Ta, L.

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