Boomerang Bigot: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* Done with no laughs at all with [[The Dragon|Legato]] in ''[[Trigun]]''. He's human, but is an [[Omnicidal Maniac]] who wants to kill all humans and anxiously awaits the day when his own boss will kill him. He hates himself and [[Mad Love|everyone else that is not Knives]]. If Knives weren't an [[Omnicidal Maniac]], Legato would probably hate everyone anyway.

* In ''[[Vampire Knight]]'', {{spoiler|Zero Kiryu is a vampire hunter who hates vampires [[Hunter of His Own Kind|despite (or perhaps because of) being an ex-human vampire himself.]]}}

* At one point in ''[[Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei]]'', Maria, [[The Illegal]] becomes fascinated with [[Manzai]] which leads to her becoming a right wing ultra-nationalist for reasons which make slightly more sense in context. She is shown denouncing the Prime Minister in front of Parliament for charges which include the influx of illegal immigrants in Japan.

* In ''[[Naruto]]'', Jirobo of the Sound Four enjoys making fun of Choji's weight during his fight with him, despite being fatter than he is.

 

* [[Played for Laughs]] in a classic Gyro Gearloose story by [[Carl Barks]] where a rival inventor moves next door to Gyro. Gyro angrily declares that he never could stand any kind of inventors or geniuses.

 

* The insane asylum in 1963's ''Shock Corridor'' has a self-proclaimed black Klansman.

* Walt Kowalski from ''[[Gran Torino]]'' is a white Pole who throws derogatory slurs at everyone, including the Polish and whites.

* In ''[[Robots]]'' Ratchet's mother Madame Gasket who wants to destroy all older "outmode" robots. While oblivious to the fact she is made of "outmode" parts.

* Played for laughs in ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]''. Edward says "Never trust a vampire. Trust me."

{{quote|Bernie Mac's character: [[Ironic Echo|Niggers need coat! Coat need Niggers!]]}}

 

* Joe Christmas from Faulkner's ''[[Light In August]]'' has serious issues, among them, he is white; he thinks he's biracial, but doesn't fit in black or white society. He has contempt for black people in particular.

* Deconstructed in Philip Roth's ''The Human Stain''. Professor Coleman Silk's long and distinguished tenure is brought to sudden ruin when he is accused of making a racist comment about two black students. Coleman is the only person who can really appreciate the awful irony of this accusation, because he is a light-skinned black man who spent his entire adult life pretending he was white, going so far as to disown his family so that they don't exist as a fact of his past others could discover. Since the accusation was perpetrated from within the Athena faculty by his personal enemies, if they knew the truth about his race, they would almost certainly believe him to be a Boomerang Bigot instead of the straightforward variety they accused him of being.

* ''[[Discworld]]''

{{quote|'''Detritus:''' You can't trust 'em.

'''Skully:''' Who?

** Similarly Reg Shoe is initially invited to join the Watch after sending in letters complaining about police treatment of the Undead community. Vimes later notices that since Reg Shoe became a watchman the number of complaints from the Undead has doubled and they are all directed against Reg Shoe.

** 71-Hour Ahmed doesn't trust any Klatchians, ''because'' he is one. He actually has to point out to Vimes, who's engaging in some pretty heavy [[Positive Discrimination]] (to counteract the regular-old discrimination that he thinks will get everyone killed by underestimation), that Klatchians can be scheming bastards too.

** The Hydrophobes are deliberately raised to hate all liquids, including their own body fluids. This aversion becomes so powerful it forms a repulsion field around the hydrophobe, practical for magic transports on water.

* In the ''[[Realm of the Elderlings|Farseer]]'' trilogy by [[Robin Hobb]], Burrich tries to repress signs of the Wit in Fitz because he himself is trying to hide that he has the Wit.

* In the [[Strugatsky Brothers]] novel ''[[Prisoners of Power]]'' it turns out that the political junta which ordered the persecution of the "deviants" is composed entirely of deviants itself. They don't do it out of bigotry though - {{spoiler|deviants are the only members of the populace who are immune to the [[Mind Control]] which the junta uses to stay in power.}}

* In the ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]'' Grand Admiral Danetta Pitta is the fiercest proponent and perpetrator of the Empire's bigotry against non-humans. While it's a closely kept secret, Pitta isn't human. Instead he's a crossbreed of two alien species that are human except for the skin color and the two have combined into a human skin tone.

 

* ''[[Chappelle's Show]]'' had a skit called "Black White Supremacist" set in the [[Deep South]]. Clayton Bigsby is a blind black man who grows up under the impression that he is white; he becomes a prominent [[You Are What You Hate|white supremacist writer and Klan leader]]. His fellow Klan members never see him out of his robes (and those that do know he's black don't tell him in fear he would kill himself so there will be one less black person in the world), and when he finally finds out he's black, he leaves his wife, [[Crosses the Line Twice|accusing her of being a "nigger lover"]].

** [[wikipedia:Leo Felton|Leo Felton]] is a [[Real Life]] version of the character.

* Col. Potter on ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|M*A*S*H]]'': "Damn colonels! Can't trust any of them!"

 

* [[Blue Öyster Cult]] got into critical trouble with a song called "ME 262", a song about the last days of [[WW 2]] seen from the viewpoint of a Luftwaffe fighter pilot tasked at the behest of Hitler and Goering with knocking down ''English planes'' and seeing them ''go burnin'''. This song, with its interludes of air-raid sirens, bombs exploding and marching jackboots, was held to be a fan-anthem to Nazism, and accusations the band members were closet Nazis failed to take into account that three of them are in fact Jewish. This was either heavy-metal gormlessness of the [[Up to Eleven]] variety, or just maybe a case of Boomerang Bigot in action. (The song also sucked as history, as most of the time the ME 262 was employed against American bombers flying by day.)

* [[Rammstein]] too has been accused of Nazism, to the point of becoming [[Trope Namer]] of [[Music to Invade Poland To]]. If this were true they would be a band consisting primary of [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|Nazi Marxist Jews]].

 

* [[George Carlin]] reserved some of his more searing criticisms for white people.

* Chris Rock's division of north Americans of color into "black people" and "niggers".

 

* In ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]'' players who are members of the Anti-Mutant secret society are required to expose and terminate (human) mutants among the populace. Of course, they're also mutants, just like everyone else in the game. Some of them are [[You Are What You Hate|genuinely unaware of it]].

** Players are also required to expose and terminate secret society members. Of course, they're also members of a secret society, just like everyone else in the game. (They genuinely do hate the secret societies that directly rival their own; the most common pairs of enemies are Anti-Mutant vs. Psion and Corpore Metal vs. Frankenstein Destroyers.)

* ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'': Banishers really, ''really'' hate mages, despite the fact that the two groups went on the same trip to the Supernal Realms and came back with knowledge of magic. The differences is that while regular mages viewed the experience as akin to religious awakening, Banishers viewed it as more like [[Mind Rape]] and feel an instinctive revulsion every time they use magic.

 

* In ''[[Wild ARMs 5]]'', Volsung is fanatically dedicated to making sure nobody ever "crosses the wall" between Veruni and human, despite {{spoiler|he himself being half-Veruni and half-human and hence a living example of crossing the wall}}.

* In ''[[Dragon Age]]'', Morrigan has such a moment with Zathrian.

* In ''[[Deus Ex]]'', the augmented player character can choose to side with anti-augmentation zealots in ''Human Revolution'' and ''Invisible War.''

 

* Chiniride from ''[[Drowtales]]'' vigorously supported her clan's religious intolerance to half-breeds, even though she is the daughter of a light elf and gray drow herself. (And she knows this and even contemplates killing herself to purify the world from her own kind.) {{spoiler|It was revealed later that, in the world of Drowtales, gray drow are the same race as light elves, just as black drow are related to dark elves. She's since become ''much'' less zealous and more reasonable.}}

** It's also recently been implied that Chiri'nide's adopted mother Shimi'lande is much more of a puppet ruler than was previously indicated, and it falls under this trope because the Kyorl'solenurn are fanatical in their hatred for the Vloz'ress, another clan that has a puppet ruler.

* ''[[Guilded Age]]'' takes place in the somewhat racist country of Gastonia, where members of distrusted races can only pull good audiences when [http://guildedage.net/webcomic/chapter-7/chapter-7-page-8/ performing self-hating acts].

 

* A hilarious variation occurs in ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'' when [[Land Down Under|Brendan Wallace]] laments about how America brought the whole terrorist plot down on themselves, and blames them for everything. He then proceeds to mentally list off his friends, claiming they didn't do anything to deserve this... who are all Americans.

* In episode 4, volume 2 of ''[[RWBY]]'', Roman gives a rather flamboyant speech full of anti-human rhetoric in front of a crowd of White Fangs, condemning humanity's greed and hatred, particularly their leadership. This at first suggests this Trope, but in truth, it's an act; he's simply [[Pandering to the Base]] in order to sway them to his side, as the White Fangs aren't too fond of humans. And several episodes later, Roman shows that he really doesn't like them either.

 

* [[wikipedia:Uncle Ruckus|Uncle Ruckus]] from ''[[The Boondocks]]'' can be basically described as a black Klansman-wannabe.

{{quote|'''Groundskeeper Willie:''' "Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland!"}}

** ''The Simpsons'' also subverts this when Krusty comes to doubt his own credentials as a Jew:

* Helga from ''[[Pasila]]'' is a female [[He-Man Woman Hater]] (with an emphasis on "he-man", even though that's not even part of the trope), taking after her father who never remotely accepted her.

 

* As the George Carlin example above illustrates, white stand-up comedians who want to do insult humor are usually forced into this by a combination of [[N-Word Privileges]] and [[Acceptable Targets]].

* Ernst Röhm, co-founder of the Nazi SA (Hitler's private guard in the early years), was gay. As fascist movements are generally homophobic, he, along with other early members of the party, were killed in an intra-party purge called the "Night of the Long Knives", which consolidated Hitler's power by eliminating most of the people who could challenge his power (or were now an embarrassment). There are [[wikipedia:The Pink Swastika|conspiracy theories]] that the Nazis were somehow a gay organization, but they don't really hold water.

** Heinrich Himmler did not meet the SS entry requirements for "racial hygiene" and physical fitness. He also talked of how the SS must "harden their hearts" and grin and bear the moral and mental consequences of murdering millions, but the only time he ever watched an ''Einsatzgruppe'' in action, he was so appalled by the sight of blood that he became hysterical.

* The French answer to Torquemada was [[wikipedia:Pierre de Lancre|Pierre de Lancre]], a 17th century judge of Bordeaux and despiser supreme of everything Basque, who was well aware nonetheless that he was Basque himself.

* Legendary chess player Bobby Fischer was very anti-Semitic, even though his mother was Jewish, and thus he was Jewish under Jewish law.

* In sociology and psychology, this is called "[[Internalized Categorism|internalized oppression]]" - where a member of a group comes to believe stereotypes about their own group. They may believe themselves to be an exception to the stereotypes, or they may hate their own group as a result.

** There's also "degreeism," where people of an oppressed group rank themselves by how closely they approach the oppressor group. For example, a masculine gay man [[Invisible to Gaydar]] might hold consider himself above a more obvious [[Drag Queen]] or [[Leather Man]], or a highly Europeanized member of a colonized society might consider himself more "civilized" than his more traditional neighbors, etc. Similarly, there was the "brown paper bag" test for some American blacks before the 1960s, where those whose skin was darker than a paper bag "failed", and those with lighter skin didn't.

* In Hawai'i ''haoles'' (pronounced "howlies"), or white people, are often subjected to harassment, name calling and (in a few cases) even outright violence by ''local'' people. Local usual means Asians and Native Hawaiians, though oddly enough it also includes the rather large Portuguese community for some reason (perhaps they see themselves as Hispanic, which effectively gives them white [[N-Word Privileges]]). [[You Are What You Hate|Also many Native Hawaiian activists could probably spend the better part of the afternoon talking about how "the ''haoles'' stole our land". This seems almost odd when you consider that nearly 60% of all people in Hawai'i (and about 99% of all Native Hawaiians) are of mixed race and nearly all of them have at least ''some'' Caucasian ancestry.]]

** A related phenomenon was the [[wikipedia:Uncle Tom|Uncle Tom]] stereotype, also called the 'House Negro' by [[Malcolm X]].

* The Filipinos have a long history of having this kind of bigot, with [[Cultural Cringe|their cynical views toward their own country]] and strong exposure to foreign influences. It has been known in the Spanish era that some Filipinos strove to look like Spaniards. (There was an old joke that may have been truer than it seems that some Filipinos pinched their noses with clothes hangers to try to make their noses sharp, like those of Spanish blood.) Similar cases followed after the Americans' arrival and when the Chinese-Filipinos came into prominence. Early Filipino films promoted Filipinized modern American lives, Western movies, and even Medieval stories, preferring the latter two over actual Philippine historical settings. Up to now certain Filipinos define their worth by their ability to speak fluent English or Chinese (with foreign accents), embrace Western or Chinese culture, being able to visit Western countries (namely the USA), or to have Western or Chinese physical features (skin whitening soaps are very popular up to this writing), coupled with how much they have renounced their Philippine heritage with abhorrence. Any person of this type who gets even a small taste of any of these "privileges" would act like he never had Filipino blood at all and would be quick to openly show scorn for other Filipinos.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Prejudice Tropes]]

[[Category:Characters As Device]]

[[Category:Character Flaw Index]]

[[Category:You Hate What You Are]]

[[Category:Recipients of False Empowerment]]

[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]