White Girls. The Nutty Professor. The Klumps. Norbit. Tyler Perry’s films. It seems to me you don’t see films with men-as-women or fatsuits as often in white films. Is there some cultural thing that I as a white guy can’t grasp about these movies? I’m honestly curious.
Tootsie; Mrs. Doubtfire?
Rob Schneider is… a stapler!*
*See also: The Hot Chick, The Animal, ad nauseum…
Google “confirmation bias.”
Moving to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
There’s always Robert Downey Jr..
Four of your five choices below to either Eddie Murphy or Tyler Perry. The schtick of both of those guys is playing multiple characters in their movies. How is that possible without body altering makeup?
And the fifth involves the Wayans Brothers, whose mere presence prevents a movie from being a comedy.
Oh, now that’s just low!
The truth is a perfect defense.
I think you’re a very naughty boy 
Ask Alec Guinness
Or maybe attribution? OP sees a film with “altered” characters, such as “Tootsie,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” or that one with the guy whose face can strech and change into any shape, and OP just thinks, “Oh, interesting concept.” Then OP sees another movie with an “altered” character, wherein the character is black, and thinks, “Hey, the character is ‘altered’ AND black! What’s going on here?”
VC30 did the same thing. Some people who aren’t black are walking down the street speaking loudly, and he just thinks, “Hmm, those guys sure are lively.” Then he passes some other people who are talking loudly, and who are black. He thinks, “Hey, those people sure are talking loudly AND they’re black! I’d better go to the SDMB and get to the truth about this!”
Why do so many black comedies have “altered” characters?
When I saw the thread title, I immediately thought of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Yeah, I think the OP is confusing a few black actors’ schticks with an entire genre. I can sort of understand why, since proportionally it seems as though there are more movies starring black actors in many roles than whites RECENTLY. There’s been a spate of the Lawrence/Murphy/Wayans and that guy who did the movies about the matriarch, but NOT “Big Momma’s House.”
If you go down through a couple of decades of movies, though, there are plenty of white folks who play more than one role or type in their movies: Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness, Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams… hell, there’s a fluff comedy MTV used to have on damned near continuous repeat called “Just One of the Guys” starring a girl posing as a boy. Michael Keaton as a snowman. Tim Allen as Santa Claus.
Honestly, I think the best job anyone’s done on this is Eddie Murphy in “Coming to America.” He friggin’ played an OLD JEWISH GUY.
I dunno. I think maybe it’s the current proportion that’s throwing the OP off, like I said.
Man, you can find a compilation or table for anything online.
Edit
Nevermind
I like the quote from the article:
Yeah, that’s it exactly. It just seemed that there were more of them to me, not that there actually were more in reality. Maybe they were more “memorable” to me? I dunno. Though I wouldn’t really throw Michael Keaton’s Jack Frost in there, since he more becomes a CGI character (and the other Jack Frost was much more entertaining in my opinion).