Why is Smithers no longer black?

Smithers is no longer black because his initial black appearance in his first episode was an animation coloring error, not intentional, and was quickly corrected to yellow. Waylon Smithers, Mr. Burns' loyal assistant, first appeared in Season 1 Episode 2, Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, in 1990, where he was colored black with blue hair due to a mistake by the color stylist. At that time, The Simpsons had low budget and rushed animation by Klasky Csupo, and the colorist mistakenly colored Smithers black. Creator Matt Groening and writer David Silverman have explained that they intended Smithers to be yellow like other Springfield residents, and the black coloring was an error. In his next appearance, Season 1 Episode 12, The Telltale Head, and thereafter, Smithers was colored yellow with gray hair, which has been his consistent design since. The show later joked about this in Season 3, with a meta joke where Smithers is black again for a flashback and someone says he changed. There is also a humorous fan theory that Smithers was black then bleached, but official explanation is animation error. Smithers is white in canon, originally from Springfield, and his skin color change was not a story decision about race, but a simple production mistake in early days of the show when animation was less consistent, similar to other early coloring errors like Moe's hair.

Smithers is no longer black because of an animation error in his first appearance, with Waylon Smithers originally appearing with darker skin in his debut episode but then standardized as yellow-white with gray hair, due to coloring mistake not intentional character change, with official explanation being animation coloring error. Waylon Smithers, Mr. Burns assistant and loyal aide, first appeared in Season 1 Episode 3 Homer's Odyssey aired January 21, 1990, where he was animated with dark skin and blue hair, looking like Black character, but in next appearance in Season 1 Episode 11 The Crepes of Wrath and thereafter he was shown with yellow skin typical of Simpsons characters and gray hair, becoming white character. Creator Matt Groening and director David Silverman explained that Smithers being black in first episode was a mistake by color stylist, who thought Smithers was supposed to be Black servant stereotype, but actually Smithers was intended to be white and gay character, so they corrected coloring to yellow with gray hair for subsequent episodes, with in-universe joke in later episode explaining he had tan from vacation. So Smithers is no longer black because first episode coloring was error, corrected to intended yellow-white skin, not intentional race change, with show never having Smithers as Black character canonically, just animation mistake in early Season 1 before character design finalized, with Smithers now consistently shown as yellow-skinned white character with gray hair and loyal to Mr. Burns.