Dick Grayson is drawn fine the way he is and claiming he isn’t is colourist. I’ll tell you why
First and foremost I would like to specify there will be mistakes in this rant as English is my third language and I am also Romani so obviously this gives me grounds to speak on this matter
Onto the rant I will start this by saying no matter how the Romani person appears - Roma are not white no matter how white passing a Romani person may look. Romani is also not specifically a race it is an ethnic group which depending on the subgroup can vary but most Roma simply consider ourself brown or will forego that and just state that they’re Romani
In this fandom there are a lot of misguided beliefs that dick Grayson is drawn “wrong” or that he is “white washed” in comics or fan arts which has resulted in harassment to people who haven’t done anything wrong
Roma don’t have a “look” there are millions of Roma world wide who look vastly different - there will never be a specific wrong way to draw dick Grayson because there is no right way to look Romani.
There are blond haired blue eyes entirely Roma just as there are dark skinned textured hair Roma
This leads me to: why do Romani people have such varying looks?
Romani people come from India and left India roughly 1,000 years ago and then settled all over the world but most of which went to Europe - where you will find the most variant subgroups of Roma.
European Roma faced slavery and attempts of ethnic cleansing for almost 5 centuries in which women were raped and Roma were killed - then almost 100 years later the holocaust happened which was the largest on scale genocide and ethnic cleansing of Roma there was.
This caused overtime majority of Western and northern European Roma to become paler and more white passing while today Roma from Far Eastern and southern Europe usually tend to be darker skinned
During American slavery it wasn’t just Africans who were taken forcefully to America but also Roma who had settled in Africa - along with Europe sending European settled Roma to America for the same purpose.
In the modern day Romani descendants of that are darker skinned as opposed to European Roma being lighter skinned
Of course - tragedies don’t dictate how Roma will look in the modern day, you can imagine when your ethnic group and your community has stayed in one place for hundreds of years you will at least start to look a little of like the people of the place you are.
Roma don’t throw people out of their community for not looking “Romani enough” white passing Roma are considered light skinned Roma and darker skinned Roma are considered dark skinned Roma - we are all Romani and we all belong to our Romani communities.
Claiming a Romani character or person doesn’t look right or is white blatantly ignores the tragedies Roma faced which caused communities of Roma to look the way they do - there is no such thing as not looking right as Roma and the level of how Romani you are is not dictated by the colour of your skin.
And while we never know what subgroup of Roma dick Grayson it is safe to assume he is romanichal (subgroup of Roma from the uk and other English speaking countries) of course until dc ever specifies otherwise.
His subgroup isn’t important but it could shed light on the struggles his community faced in the current and in the past.
Dick Grayson’s Romani identity isn’t decided by his skin it is decided by who he is and who he is is Rrom.
I could go into more intricate detail of Romani culture which is seemingly always butchered in fandom (especially in relation to language) but I will save that for another post
