a few things

1. Yes 'dark skinned' would be the easy term but they really didn't want to mention skin colour when describing the person, so dithered for ages trying to guess a country.

2. (For whoever asked about French terms to describe race) For white and black I tend to just hear noir and blanc. (It seems to be a bit more acceptable to talk about 'les noirs', 'les blancs' etc than in english, though maybe I was just talking to less up-to-date people. The one they really tip-toe around is people from North Africa. I think d'origine magrebine was the term normally used.

3. Some of the best times are when people are so comfortable with each other that they're able to use even quite pejorative terms jokingly. (I'm thinking of a japanese friend who refered to himslf as nippy. There were others. Vaguely analogously I remember a friend of my dad's used to call him a 'proddy bastard'.)

PS. Might have already been mentioned, but what about white Zimbabwians, South Africans etc...who have children in America.