Racist Grandma



"Sheriff Bart: Good mornin', ma'am. And isn't it a lovely morning?

Elderly Woman: Up yours, nigger!"

- Blazing Saddles

Racism in a regular character: depressing. Racism in a grandma: hilarious.

This is a situation where the old woman who you expect to be a cookie-making nice old lady starts unexpectedly spouting obscenely offensive comments (though as the page image shows, they can do both). This is usually Played for Laughs. This can apply to any elderly character and any kind of political incorrectness, although usually it really is racism by a grandma.

This can be Truth in Television. Although obviously not all old people are bigots, old people are more likely to subscribe to pre-civil rights cultural beliefs and are more likely to say inappropriate thoughts out loud. However, this tends to be counterbalanced by the fact that they were raised in a "more polite" era than ours. (More polite, not "polite.") Take Archie Bunker, for instance, who took care to substitute "spade" for "nigger," "hebe" for "kike," etc. It can also be accidental if the grandma is using what was once the politically correct term, without being aware that it is now considered derogatory, (e.g., in the article linked earlier in this paragraph, the author recounts her negative feelings when an elderly man referred to someone as "colored" -- but this was in fact the politest term for black people when the man was likely raised, and the chosen way for most black people to describe themselves back then, like the NAACP.) Furthermore, elderly people whose views about minorities really did change with the times may suddenly begin spouting offensive beliefs from their youths if they're suffering from senile dementia.

This character is usually intended for comedy and will tend to be Affably Evil (or, at worst, Faux Affably Evil or a petty dog-kicker). BEWARE: This is not true of all bigoted senior citizens; some of them can perpetrate genocide just as adroitly as their younger counterparts.

See also Nazi Grandpa, Innocent Bigot, Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior! and When I Was Your Age.

Anime & Manga

 * In the manga Future Lovers, Kento's grandfather is dismayed when he finds out that his grandson is dating another man (Akira) and spends the rest of his page time shooting Death Glares at Akira and not-so-subtly indicating his disgust at their relationship. Completely Played for Laughs, with the grandfather's facial expressions being some of the funniest things in this manga.

Comedy

 * In the Cheech and Chong skit "Hey Margaret", an elderly couple, Harry (Chong) and Margaret (Cheech), see a porno movie. Everything in the movie amuses Harry, but he's disgusted when the star has sex with a black man. For Margaret, it's the exact opposite: it's the only thing in the movie that arouses her.

Comic Books

 * In Maus the holocaust-surviving main character ironically has resentments against African Americans. Taken into account that this is a drawn memoir, it also qualifies as Truth in Television.
 * Rudi's.

Film
""UP YOURS, NIGGER!""
 * Woody Allen's Annie Hall: "Y'know, you're what Grammy Hall would call 'A real Jew!'... She hates the Jews" At a later scene when Alvy is having dinner with Annie and her family, you see her disapproving Grammy's POV of Alvy as a stereotypical Hasidic Jew.
 * Randall's grandmother in Clerks II. She called him a porch monkey and referred to a broken bottle as a nigger knife. Randal never even realized they were offensive terms until he uses "porch monkey" in front of a black customer. Then he tries to "take the term back" by using it even more.
 * Schwarzfahrer, an excellent German short, features one who keeps ranting racist remarks at another passenger. Funny twist at the end, though - two, in fact.
 * Gran Torino
 * Not a Grandma, but the application of this trope to Clint Eastwood's character in is what has some people calling it a comedy hit.
 * The Hmong grandma next door is just as bad, resulting in an insult volley between the two, even though neither one can understand the other.
 * Walt is a deconstruction of this trope: The whole point of the movie is that Walt realizes the people who he has being directing racial slurs all his life are Not So Different, that his experience as a soldier let him know much more about death than about life, and that explains why he is so lonely and sad.
 * Bringing Down the House
 * Mrs. Arness, though it's more that she's just out-of-touch in general: "There's a lovely Negro spiritual that Ivy's brother used to sing..."
 * Mrs. Kline across the street. Unlike Arness, who's merely tactless, Kline is very much a racist.
 * "Negro" was a perfectly polite and respectful word - used by blacks themselves, too - until about the early 1970s. It only got changed because those in the "Black Power" movement wanted to redeem a word that up until then had been associated with darkness and evil - and also because they associated "Negro" with the cowardly, apolitical "Uncle Tom" blacks whom they considered traitors. "Negro spiritual" is essentially a musical genre name still in use today, hardly a racial slur. Go ahead, Google it.
 * In Blazing Saddles, the black sheriff wishes an elderly woman a good morning. Her reply?


 * Granted, it is 1874. Which only makes it more hilarious.

""I've worked in worse places, philosophically speaking. I used to work in the Académie Française, but it didn't do me any good at all, and I once worked in the library in the Prado in Madrid, but it didn't teach me nothing, I recall. And the Library of Congress you'd have thought would hold some key, but it didn't, and neither did the Bodleian Library. In the British Museum I hoped to find some clue. I worked there from nine till six, read every volume through, but it didn't teach me nothing about life's mystery. I just kept getting older, and it got more difficult to see, till, eventually, me eyes went and me arthritis got bad. And so now I'm cleaning up in here, but I can't be really sad, 'Cause, you see, I feel that life's a game. You sometimes win or lose, And though I may be down right now, at least I don't work for Jews."
 * The sweet little grandma in Wedding Crashers is pretty anti-gay. Apparently, Eleanor Roosevelt was a "rug-munching dyke" but that would be something of a subversion, as those are all very new slang.
 * My Big Fat Greek Wedding has a little granny from the Greek side of the newlyweds that constantly complains about Turks: "Turci Sacramenti!" Greece was a Turkish colony for a few centuries, too, so it wouldn't be surprising if many self-professed Greeks have Turkish blood. Racism has as much to do with nationality as ethnicity and the two countries have come perilously close to going to war within living memory.
 * Monty Pythons the Meaning of Life.


 * Ghosts Of Mississippi: Byron de la Beckwith (James Woods in heavy old-man makeup) pretends to be this after the cold case against his 1963 murder of civil-rights activist Medgar Evers is reopened in the 1990s by attorney Bobby DeLaughter (Alec Baldwin). Beckwith repeatedly denies having committed the murder, all the while expressing glee that Evers is dead. As the trial is reaching its conclusion, Beckwith has a chance meeting with DeLaughter and taunts him, claiming that even if he had done the killing, none of the jurors - not even the black ones - would convict him, because they'd view him as a confused old man and feel sorry for him. (Never mind that Beckwith was more than 30 years younger at the time of the murder!) He is wrong.
 * The actual Beckwith was also much like this, even to the point of seeming schizophrenic. He could seem perfectly calm and halfway reasonable when discussing his bigoted views, but as soon as he lost his temper a far more violent streak would present itself.
 * Subverted in the otherwise forgettable Cabin Fever - when asked what a prominently displayed rifle is for, the elderly store owner replies "It's for the niggers." At the end of the movie, we see a group of young black people drive up to the store, prompting the owner to hurry inside.

Literature

 * Lois McMaster Bujold's Barrayar
 * Count Piotr is so anti-mutant that he tries to bribe the doctor who is treating his grandson's fetus (damaged and in an artificial womb because his mother was pregnant during a chemical attack) to kill the child. He also ejects Aral and Cordelia from Vorkosigan House, and later on it is revealed that he tried to murder Miles in his crib with his own hands, prevented only by Miles' bodyguard. Miles has a bodyguard from birth because Piotr is not the only racist grandma around. He does get a bit better later on, after Miles's intelligence begins to show; he is still a prejudiced, reactionary, embittered old man, but he not only stops trying to kill Miles, but actually becomes a (rather distant and authoritarian) mentor figure.
 * Miles later meets an actual racist grandma in The Mountains Of Mourning - well, she would be a grandma if her granddaughter hadn't just been murdered for being a mutant (she had a harelip and cleft palette - not mutations, but close enough for the village she was born in).
 * Funny Boy: Ammachi ("Grandma") has the most virulent reaction to Radha's relationship with Anil, and talks openly about her approval of the terrorist Tamil group, the Tigers. Possibly a subversion in that this actually isn't so far from how other family members feel at different points in the book, but Ammachi is vocal about it before the others are.
 * In Harry Potter, (the portrait of)Sirius Black's deceased mother is really anti-Muggle/Muggleborn/"half-breed". However, such beliefs are rather common in ther Potterverse, even among young people, Walburga Black is just really loud about it.

Live-Action TV
"MAXINE: "Who do you think you're talking to?"
 * Carnivale: Ben Hawkins's grandmother, the Crone. It also has an amusingly racist comic relief character in the form of Stumpy.
 * This happens on Arrested Development in an episode where Tonight Someone Dies. The narrator chimes in "Alright, we'll tell you now. She's the one who dies."
 * The Catherine Tate Show has Nan, an extremely bigoted, foul-mouthed, grandmother.
 * Malcolm in The Middle
 * Ida.
 * Mrs. Griffin. Besides being racist, she even despises white people not born in the United States.
 * Scrubs
 * One of JD's grandmas is "a teensy bit racist" (she thought Turk was a burglar).
 * One opening had Turk wheeling around an old woman in a wheelchair, who cheerfully requested that he "makes sure they don't give me any black blood." His response? An offended and sincere "I'll try."
 * In "My Missed Perception", there's a "senile old racist", who has to be reminded which people he hates.
 * Mildred from Little Britain USA.
 * A character in the original throws up graphically when she finds out that the food she's just sampled was made by someone who isn't white or who she otherwise disapproves of; this joke was mildly amusing the first time.
 * Sophia from The Golden Girls is sometimes this trope incarnate, and at other times the most progressive, open-minded, and tolerant person on the face of the earth, Depending On the Writer. It doesn't help that this show has terrible continuity.
 * Hoyt's mother Maxine on True Blood. When she tries to argue with Hoyt about his vampire girlfriend, Hoyt calls her out on her hatred of everyone:

HOYT: "My mama. Who hates Methodists."

MAXINE: "I got my reasons."

HOYT: "And Catholics."

MAXINE: "Just priests and nuns."

HOYT: "African Americans."

MAXINE: "Hush. That's a secret.""

""Come out, you cheating white bitch!""
 * Darnell's grandma from My Name Is Earl (whose presence becomes puzzling after Darnell's backstory is revealed) is apparently one of these:


 * On Parks and Recreation, Leslie once got together all the former heads of her department for a picnic. The oldest one had an outdated sexist attitude and hilariously couldn't stop talking about menstruation and how it supposedly makes women inferior.
 * In ER, one old lady once said to Benton that she is uncomfortable with a black doctor examinining her. Oh, and that lady? She was black, too.
 * Played with in Dollhouse, where a Racist Grandma imprint was (for God knows what reason) put on Sierra, the doll portrayed by Nepali-Australian actress Dichen Lachman. Made funnier because it had a mix of Foe Yay in it as well, also for God knows what reason.
 * Community
 * Most mean things that Pierce says can be chalked up to being significantly older than the rest of the cast.
 * Pierce's astonishingly old-timey father had racism down to an intricate science. He not only berates Pierce for associating with "minorities and Jewesses," but goes after the very white Brita and Jeff for being of Swedish and Welsh decent respectively. Shirley calls him "The Abed of racism"
 * Lampshaded in an episode of Star Trek, where Abe Lincoln (it's complicated) calls Uhura a "charming negress" and is promptly corrected.
 * An episode of Murphy Brown dealing with FYI trying out a radically different format had Murphy interviewing an "ordinary American citizen". Said citizen being a meek and extremely polite old lady...who quickly derails the interview into expressing her displeasure about the different ethnic groups in her neighborhood. This coupled with the sheer ridiculousness of the new format eventually prompts Murphy to explode at her.

Music

 * The Brian Haner song "Grandma Was a Racist".
 * In Kunt and the Gang's "Fucksticks" Kunt mentions that one of the times his granddad used the eponymous swear was "when the first black people moved into his street."

Newspaper Comics
"Mom: "Look at the cute colored girl."
 * Steve Dallas's mother in Bloom County:

Steve: "You can't call them that!"

Mom: "What about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?"

Steve: "No, no, no!"

Mom: "Well, how about Negro then?"

Steve: "You can't call them that either!"

Mom: Well, there's the United Negro College Fund..."

Steve: "No, Ma, you can't say that!"

Mom: "So what should I call them then?"

Steve: "People of color."

Mom: "People of color?"

Steve: "People of color."

Mom: "Colored people!"

Steve: "No, ma!""

Webcomics

 * Subverted to comic effect in this strip of pictures for sad children.
 * Played straight here.
 * Steve's parents from Daisy Owl
 * Lampshaded in Partially Clips: A girl asks her grandpa why he never gives her any advice on life. He replies that his grandpa advised him, (paraphrased) "Son, if you ever find yourself with a good woman, don't be afraid to give her a good smack now and then. Keeps her in line. And don't take no gruff from any blacks, either." He concludes that you should never give advice when you're old, because you'll inevitably come off as an insensitive and possibly racist Jerkass.
 * A Softer World: We Love You, You Ignorant Prick
 * The furry webcomic Goblin Hollow has Lily's grandfather and grandmother who have a problem with Lily (a cougar-African lion hybrid) dating Ben (a bear). Even Lily's father admits that Lily's grandparents are raving bigots.
 * Ginger, a reoccurring character in Mike Bookseller.

Web Original

 * In one Something Awful "Fashion SWAT" segment, they discussed this in regard of an old lady: "In old lady hell, the candy is the delicious kind that everyone likes" "And people call them out on all the racist stuff they say" "Eh, who knows, maybe the time we get old, stuff we say will be seen weird 'Gee, I think someone should do something about all those pedophiles having sex on the streets.'"
 * Lampshaded in a video done by Sarah Silverman, telling young, liberal Jews to visit their grandparents in Florida to encourage them to transcend their racial prejudices and vote for Barack Obama. She recommends holding over them the threat of no longer being visited if they don't vote for him.
 * Parodied by The Onion, like everything else.
 * Gene Ray: he's racist against everyone.

Western Animation

 * In an episode of American Dad, Roger feels unappreciated by Stan and runs away, disguising himself as an old lady. He befriends another old woman and they get along for a while...up until she spits on the Lincoln Memorial and says "That's for freeing the slaves, you Yankee carpetbagger!" She spends the rest of the episode making such slurs against everyone (even other whites) so by the time Stan offers her to the CIA and claims she's the escaped alien, nobody cares.
 * A Static Shock episode showed that Richie Foley's Dad was a racist. One of the few cases the change of heart is made (somewhat) realistically.
 * The Simpsons: Lisa once researched her family tree. Grandpa told her about having an African-American ancestor and that he was reluctant about admitting it because his generation was racist.
 * In an episode of Family Guy, Mrs. Pewterschmidt has found her husband cheating on her and leaves him. Peter suggests that Mr. Pewterschmidt get back on the dating scene, and takes him out to a club. Mr. Pewterschmidt sees a black man at the club and thinks he's a waiter or servant, and refers to him as "boy," which causes the women that Mr. Pweterschmidt was with to leave in disgust along with the black man.

Real Life

 * Truth in Television: Barack Obama's white grandmother used to utter ethnic stereotypes, as did his paternal aunts - except being African, they had a different set of ethnic stereotypes, including ones about other African countries and ethnicities which passes right over the head of Westerners. They still made Obama cringe, according to his biography.
 * Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown got caught on a TV microphone he forgot he was wearing, referring to an old granny he met on a media-op-meet-the-locals-street-walk as a "bigoted woman" because she complained to him about migrants. She asked him where all these Eastern Europeans were coming from.
 * If you're at least partially white Protestant American, you may have relatives two or three generations back who were in the Ku Klux Klan. If you're from Germany or Austria and are not Jewish, you almost certainly did have relatives two or three generations back who were in the Nazi Party or in Hitler Youth. Many of the moderate democratic political establishment in Cambodia today had roots in the Khmer Rouge. Not everyone in these situations was a "true believer," and may have been part of these institutions because they were (back then) the establishment. But some of them really were racists. Some people evolve in their old age, and some people take bigotry stubbornly to their graves. It's just human nature. To be fair, if you weren't in the Nazi party, you could not buy, sell or trade worth a damn. And if you were under a certain age, it was mandatory to be in Hitler Youth. A good chunk of Nazis belonged to the party as a way to survive in a fascist state.
 * A majority of Germans in the Third Reich era were definitely not in the Nazi party. Nor did they let in everyone who asked. It was supposed to be an institution for the country's ruling elite, not a mandatory citizenship requirement. You had to be a member to get a good place in government, but plenty of old school military leadership never joined. There's more truth to the Hitler Youth part, but they didn't manage anything close to 100% participation, either.
 * It's true the NSDAP even stopped accepting new members for a while because they saw themselves as the "elite". However it was almost impossible to avoid joining the HJ, especially if you lived in parts of Germany where most people were firm believer of nazism. You had to be lucky that you never got an official order by the local government. Pope Benedict XVI is a good example, he was a member of a catholic youth organization, and refused to join the HJ as long as he could. But when the letter arrived, it wasn't his decision anymore.
 * I can't trust Obama he's not...he's not...he's an Arab.
 * McCain's reply has Unfortunate Implications of its own, in its unspoken assumption that actual Arabs cannot be "decent family men" and so on.
 * No Granddad, we don't care how many Jews you killed!
 * As an organic component of the legendary Hungarian-Romanian antagonism, it has been observed that most Romanian individuals who have shown keen interest in Hungarian culture when young, became the most vocal nationalists (by Romanian standards, that means you hate Hungarians) by the time they grew old. No one can really explain how this happens, but it's likely related to some sort of identity crisis.
 * The US Census Bureau is aware of this. The census form for race lists as one option "African-American, Black, Negro, or Colored." Because apparently older African Americans might think of themselves as colored. You can run into problems when white census takers have to list the race options to someone who didn't send in their census form, though they're generally expected to use their judgment.
 * This. Yes, do go ahead and yell "Heil Hitler" at a Jew who supports national health care. Really, he won't get pissed off. Not at all.