>>97171111Fear of being called racist. Make one character too dark, and people project their biases onto it, but blame the staff for making them feel that way. Make it too light, and people say it's playing into stereotypes. There's a similar taboo for hair, but it's different in some ways; for example, different styles are OK, but different textures are open to criticism (but details like that are usually left out anyway, because they make animation more expensive). The safe way to get around that is to make everyone the same shade of brown. The smart way to get around that is to have multiple characters with varying skin tones and different, distinct personalities, but that means the writers would have to write more characters, which terrifies hacks.
The stupid thing is that the US still depends on caricature for its character designs, so you get weird compromises like the SU lips. They're supposed to be full, but you can't just draw a complete shape because "that's racist", so the shape's open on the sides. But people without full lips still get thin little lines to mark their mouths, so the implication is still there. But when someone wears lipstick, they get to have proper lips, so ¯\_(?)_/¯