The nearly complete absence of black people in the series is real. I don't think I've missed an episode, and have seen only two blacks in the whole series: Kendrick, the first of the "extra" Slayers who was killed off, and Mr. Trick who was killed off last episode. Kendrick was portrayed as less than Buffy in just about every way (except hotness). She was technically better at fighting, but lacked Buffy's ability to tap into her rage, and thus was worse in real fights. She was a "good" type, obedient to her watcher, and thus lacked the social circle or help Buffy had. She was portrayed pretty much as a naïf, sort of a little sister for Buffy.
Mr. Trick the second black character, was one of many vampires. He was portrayed as smarter than the average vampire, but also cowardly. (Many of the vampires portrayed seem quite fond of risk taking.)
And that is it for black characters on the show. The crowd scenes with students milling in the hallways or walking on campus, or in the classroom -- no black students. Dances at the Bronze (the only teen club in town) -- no black teens. Sunnydale streets -- day or night -- no black people. Grungy vampire bars -- no black people. You don't even see a black janitor or waiter or sales clerk. I grew up in Southern California, and I'll tell you I don't care how whitebread a town is: you don't get a Southern California town with no black people. (Not to mention Latinos, Asian...)
Now there is an interesting question: is there a possible explanation other than racism for this? To start with it is very unusual for a series with a lot of crowd scenes to completely exclude blacks. Even series without token black characters usually cover their ass by at least including them as part of the background. Could this be a conscious rather than unconscious decision?
One possibility is that it is a way to exaggerate the whitebread nature of the town hiding a hell beneath. Sunnydale is imagined as a town of a few hundred thousand with a murder rate five times that of Washington D.C. But since it is "white" no one thinks of it as a high crime town.
There may be something to the allegation that you cannot portray a U.S. town without blacks, that something has to take the "psychic" space that black people normally do. I think you could make the argument that in this case, it is not the vampires, but the white townspeople themselves. Think about it. The power structures in town (including leading politicians and business people) are controlled by vampires and demons. Nobody admits that vampires and demons exist. The high death rate in Sunnydale is just taken for granted as a fact of nature. (Sample conversation the first day of school -- one sports fan to the other: "If we just have a fewer mysterious deaths , I think the team can go all the way this year".)
So the white Sunnydale residents inhabit the psychic space left empty by the missing black people. The vampires represent not blacks but whites -- their existence denied in much the same way official mythology denies the existence of white privilege.
Then again maybe there are no black people in Sunnydale because the writers forgot to put them in, and devoting this much energy to analyzing "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is absurd. Anyone for a good old fashioned Meta-narrative?
Gar W. Lipow 815 Dundee RD NW Olympia, WA 98502