Fantastic Racism/Literature

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Fantastic Racism in Literature include:

  • The Boundary's Fall series exhibits this in spades - the magically Gifted look down on "the commons", the commons fear and resent the Gifted; the Elves view the Garu'nah as wild savages and Humans as just plain inferior, and the Garu'nah think the Elves are honorless and arrogant.
  • In the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Stephen Erikson there is masses of this. Seven Cities and the Malazan Empire; Letherii and Tiste Edur; Letherii and Awl; Bargast and Moranth; Tiste Andii, Tiste Edur and Tiste Liosan all hate each other; Imass and Jaghut, Jaghut and K'Chain Che'Malle, K'Chain Che'Malle and K'Chain Nah'Rhuk, the Tiste races and K'Chain Che'Malle. Basically, everyone hates pretty much everyone else.
  • Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime: "ursism" is the discrimination against anthropomorphic talking bears, and it's Serious Business.
    • In his A Shade of Grey the society in the book is divided along lines of what color of the spectrum is visible to you with Purples being highest, then Blues, and so on with those who are completely colorblind, Greys being the lowest.
  • The Discworld books have always done this skilfully, using it, subverting it, and double-subverting it.
    • Especially interesting is Commander Samuel Vimes of the City Watch. A self-described speciesist, Vimes has nonetheless allowed the Watch to become one of the most species-blind employers in the city, and recognizes better than most the value of its non-human members, such as dwarfs, trolls, and even vampires, for which he still admits an innate and intense dislike. Mind you, Vimes is also a big-time misanthrope, so his dislike stems from his job-inflicted tendency to treat everyone like a bastard until the opposite can be proven; the narrator in one of the books even states that Vimes hates all races and species equally.
      • As does Vimes himself: "I don't like dwarfs much," he tells dwarf recruit Cheery Littlebottom, "But I don't like humans much either, so maybe that makes it okay, I don't know."
    • The Discworld includes its own racial epithets equivalent to our N-word: "rocks" for trolls, "lawn ornaments" for dwarfs, etc. The trolls have "squashies" for humans.
    • Despite the quote at the top of the page, Pratchett later introduced plain non-fantastic racism between humans to the Discworld in Jingo, with its depiction of Morporkian bigotry against Klatchians and Klatchian bigotry against Morporkians. In either case it kind of backs up the previous assertion that plain old racism is not a major problem, as it seems to come down to nationalism more than anything else, with Fred's attempted racial justification for his dislike of Klatch diminished when it was pointed out to him that Omnians are pretty brown and he has no problem with them. All the same the series does imply there remains some racial prejudices, but being the exception rather than the norm, genuine such feeling restricted to Captain Quirk in Men at Arms and Lord de Worde in The Truth.
      • Also, they were sort of at war with the Klatchians, so the racism tended towards the sort of self-contradictory propaganda designed to make them look like contemptible sub-humans so that the soldiers wouldn't feel so bad about killing them (Sergeant Colon describes them as being both vicious brutes in love with mindless violence and worthless cowards liable to run at the mere scent of a fight, almost in the same sentence).
    • Non-human species often show a lot of Fantastic Racism toward each other, as well, most prominently the conflict between dwarfs and trolls.
      • Also within species, Soul Music makes passing mention that trolls from sedimentary families are usually considered second-class trolls compared to those from igneous families. (Thud! shows us the two extremes of the geology-based class system: at the top is the Diamond King [although Mr Shine is too enlightened to have such prejudices himself], and at the bottom is Brick).
    • There is a conversation in the novel Men at Arms in which prejudiced nobility simultaneously treat dwarfs as inferior, and yet criticize their cleverness, poor logic associated with antisemitism or xenophobia.
    • In Snuff, everyone looks down on goblins.
  • The Seven Realms Series has this everywhere and it's even justified at times! The Demon King, the man said to have nearly destroyed the world 1000 years ago, was in fact, a wizard. Upon his defeat, the Spirit Clans stopped making extremely powerful amulets for the wizards to use (this alone making the wizards think lowly of them), but it was forbidden for a wizard to ever mary the ruling queen. On top of that, many peoples throughout the seven realms think of the Spirit Clans as savages and wizards as heretics. The ill-will between these peoples really make things more complicated for the heroes later on in the story.
  • Dr. Seuss' story "The Sneetches" is a thinly disguised allegory on racism (or classism). It describes a conflict between two subgroups of the titular Sneetches, a race of bird-like humanoids. One group has stars on their bellies, and thinks themselves superior because of it, while the other group doesn't. The Aesop comes after a huckster with the unlikely name of "Sylvester McMonkey McBean" convinces the two groups to repeatedly alter who has stars and who doesn't, along with which of the two conditions are more desirable. By the time McBean packs up his operation and leaves, they don't remember who had stars to begin with and who didn't, and thus abandon their prejudices as worthless.
  • Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Green-Sky Trilogy deals extensively with the tensions between the fair-skinned, tree-dwelling Kindar and the darker-skinned, underground race of Erdlings. In this case, the difference between the Kindar and Erdlings was as much cultural as ethnic (The Kindar were vegetarians and the Erdlings hunted; the Kindar believed in repressing all negative emotions, while the Erdlings were very expressive. Among other things).
  • Done four times in the Harry Potter series: first, in the way some "pureblood" wizards look down on Muggles and those who have Muggles in their ancestry; second, in Hermione's well-meaning campaign on the behalf of house elves; third, the treatment of werewolves and "halfbreeds" such as Hagrid; and fourth, the Dursleys' bigotry against wizards. The second and third are part of a larger theme of non-humans being discriminated against, and centaurs fall into this category too; Dolores Umbridge hates them, and Firenze the centaur gets into trouble with his own people, who consider him an "Uncle Tom" and traitor for associating with humans. Lupin chooses to resign from school after everybody finds out he's a werewolf.
    • And the "official" wizard attitude to the other magical races is clearly portrayed as a different kind of racism to the Nazi Death-Eaters, not open-minded egalitarianism; Harry is surprised to see a statue at the Ministry of Magic with a centaur and a goblin in submissive adoration of a wizard and witch; totally preposterous (unlike the house-elf in the same statue), but evidently the way the Ministry believes the world "should" work.
  • In JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth relations (actual contact as well as stories/myths) between various peoples are often less than rosy, both between races (Humans, Elves, and Dwarves; especially Elves vs. Dwarves), but also among peoples/nations of the same race. One of the themes of The Lord of the Rings is the different races overcoming their differences in the face of a greater threat, posed by Sauron (though it should be noted Sauron himself is in control of basically a totally evil race, and so the alliance is also against them).
    • Note also that there's no solidarity between the "evil" creatures. Saruman's Orcs hate the Orcs of Mordor and vice versa, and within Mordor, the Orcs of Barad-Dur feud with those of Minas Morgul. It never quite degenerates into Enemy Civil War, but it works to the protagonists' advantage multiple times.
    • Played to a ridiculous degree in the old animated Hobbit movie. The three forces are at war, slaughtering each other, and then the orcs cross the hill and the three generals start referring to themselves as old friends...
    • Tolkien was deliberately vague and sparing with descriptions of the enemy. One can just as easily say the "non-white" humans are not the enemy because they are "non-white", but rather because they are allied with—or under the power of—Sauron. Also, read Sam's reaction to the dead warrior of Harad. He wonders "whether he was really evil at heart, and what lies or threats had driven him on this march so long from his home, and whether he would have rather stayed there in peace."
      • In The Return of the King, several of the provincial units described as marching to the defense of Minas Tirth are "swarthy" (dark-skinned). Tolkien would have known perfectly well how much Britain owed to Imperial troops.
    • Also note, that J.R.R. Tolkien acknowledged the fantastic racism in LotR. He was said to have strongly regretted his depiction of the Orcs as seemingly Exclusively Evil and irredeemable, because it conflicted with his devout Catholicism. He often later defended the Orcs in later writings, claimed that they were simply misled and manipulated, and even said that "we were all orcs in The Great War." Just as the "evil" humans were misled and manipulated.
    • It´s interesting to notice that not one of the Rohirrim distrusts the Woses, even when they are so ugly, and that Frodo calls Bill Helechal "evil and stupid" and Barliman Butterbur "lovable and stupid" then Aragorn is described as A Credit For The Men Gandalf immediately corrects him. All the Free Peoples were attacked by Sauron, but the settlement with less casualties of war was Bree (three men and two hobbits), declared as the only place in Middle Earth where two races coexisted peacefully and fully respected each other.
    • A Cracked article 6 Horrifying Implications of Awesome Fantasy Movie Universes mentions how Middle-earth is segregated in the time of The Lord of the Rings: "There are no humans or elves living in the Shire, and if a hobbit is going to live in Rivendell, he'd better be a big goddamned deal."
  • In the Wild Cards series, Jokers are basically reviled and treated as second-class citizens due to their wild card-induced mutations. On the other hand, Aces, who just gained superpowers, are treated reverently by modern media, but were the subject of cultural paranoia in the past (to the point where Joseph McCarthy blacklisted Aces, not Communists). In this case, despite the presence of visible mutants and superhumans, bog-standard bigotry still exists (two of the first big-name Aces were constant victims of it).
    • Sometimes one form of positive fantastic racism counteracts the other though. In-story the South African Apartheid regime treated black Aces as colored, while all jokers were treated as black.
  • In The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries, there are several forms of racism. All the supernaturals think they're the best, and better than just plain humans, so there is segregation along supernatural lines:
    • Vampires think they're better than Weres, Shifters, Faeries, and Witches.
    • Weres think they're better than Shifters (Shifters don't turn into wolves. Weres only turn into wolves) and think Vampires are disgusting, to the point of slurring humans who associate closely with vampires. Shifters call themselves Weres when the wolf-type two-natured can't hear and think the wolven lycanthropes are thugs.
    • As you get to know the fairies, farther on in the series, they are shown to be prejudiced against anybody not-fairy. They're divided into two factions, one wants to kill all part-fairy hybrids.
    • Witches have infighting between Wiccans and nastier factions, who abuse vampire blood like normal people abuse drugs.
    • Humans are prejudiced against vampires, thinking God likes them better. And also because Vampires, y'know, eat them.
  • The trailmen and catmen in the Darkover series are the frequent targets of bigotry by the humans.
  • In Brave Story, animal people are frequent targets of discrimination by humans. The Corrupt Church in one creepy town advocates the hunting down and dominating of animal people. Creepy.
  • Despite having demon and vampire friends, as well as a were-fox girlfriend Colt Regan Hates Were-rats.
  • In Harry Turtledove's Darkness series, an allegory of World War II set in a fantasy world, the nonsense of prejudice is put front and center by making those with Aryan features (their oppressors call them "the blonds") the equivalent of Jews (the Polish analogues are the ones with more typically Jewish features). He also does this in War Between the Provinces, essentially the same thing for the Civil War with blond serfs as the equivalent of southern slaves.
  • Absolutely slaughtered in Tom Holt's book Someone Like Me. Humans and monsters in a post-apocalyptic Earth have been fighting and killing each other because each sees the other as evil. Told entirely from the human point of view, the novel ends when the protagonist finds that one of the monsters knows how to talk, and is just as human as he is. However, he kills it anyway, because he'd been killing them for so long he wouldn't be able to face thinking of them as people.
  • Explored in depth in the Temeraire series, where dragons are treated by most Europeans as nothing more than quite intelligent pack animals or weapons platforms. People will casually discuss breeding dragons for various traits, and even whether or not it would be a good idea to slaughter all feral (riderless) dragons - all this despite the fact that dragons can speak English (and often several other languages) extremely well and have a normal human range of intelligence. In this case, it's almost not even a metaphor for anything, because the books are set during the Napoleonic era, with all the racism and sexism of that time fully intact. After all, if people can decide that Asians, Africans, and women are inferiors, how much more a non-human intelligence?
    • You mention the ferals, but not the plan to send a dragon infected with a disease that kills dragons horribly over to France and let the disease wipe out not only France's fighting dragons, but those in the breeding grounds too, AND thousands of others outside France too -- Don't worry, Laurence and Temeraire bring them the cure.
  • In Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, humans heavily discriminate against toons, the living cartoon characters they share their world with. Toons are treated in much the same manner African Americans were in pre-Civil Rights America, with elements such as segregated restaurants and schooling. One could even say that they were put in an "Animation Age Ghetto".
  • In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, racism between humans and nonhumans, and between different species of nonhumans, sometimes comes up. The first kind is especially prominent in parts of the X Wing Series, where the nonhumans living in an alien's slum decide that a Rebel plotter's refusal to dance with one of them means that he is speciesist and can be killed as an example, despite sitting at a table with other nonhumans who defend him. Plots to exploit the unease between species pop up a lot in the more cerebral Star Wars novels.
    • Oppression of non-human races was a stated part of Imperial Doctrine. Near-Humans got off a lot better, but not perfectly.
    • Less mentioned is the plight of droids, ranging from mere automatons to thinking, feeling beings, all of them property with memories that can be wiped at a whim. It rarely comes up.
    • Then there's some mild prejudice against cyborgs. A prosthetic eye or hand is one thing, but it seems like the more mechanical someone is, the less of a future people regard them with. Ton Phanan epitomizes this feeling.
    • In Vision of the Future, this conversation between Han Solo and a clone of Baron Fel. At the time, no details about the Clone Wars were known, and Zahn like most other authors assumed that the clones hadn't been on the Republic's side, so the antipathy was a bit different in origin.

Han Solo: So what's it like being a clone?
Carib: About as you'd expect. It's the sort of secret that gets heavier with time and age.

Han Solo: Yeah. I can imagine.

Carib: Excuse me, Solo, but you can't possibly imagine it. Every time one of us leaves this valley it's with the knowledge that every outside contact puts our lives and those of our families at risk. The knowledge that all it will take will be one person suddenly looking at us with new eyes, and the whole carefully created soap bubble of the ever-so-close Devist family will collapse into the fire of hatred and rage and murder.

    • The Yuuzhan Vong consider themselves the Master Race, and declared a war against everyone else to wipe out the galaxy's "impurity". They doubly hate technology-users.
  • This plays a large part in Karin Lowachee's books. For most of Warchild Series, EarthHub is at war with the alien strivs. They are seen as bestial, cannibalistic, and Exclusively Evil. Of course, once their society is explored, they're revealed to be a lot more complex than humans first thought. But given what the author seems to think of humanity...
  • Discrimination against Animals (yes, the capitalization is mandatory) is an important plot point in Gregory Maguire's Wicked. Elphaba, having green skin, suffers from this too, to the point of her mother considering killing her after her birth.
  • Isaac Asimov had this as a recurring theme in his works, most obviously in The Currents of Space and its Days of Future Past spin on the cotton plantations of the old Deep South. Prejudice against Earth-born humans and against robots were also recurring themes - see The Caves of Steel for examples of both at once.
  • Quite a bit in Warrior Cats. Although trans-Clan racism is mostly limited to stereotypes, the real racism is directed at half-Clan cats, kittypets, the Tribe of Rushing Water, and loners and rogues.
  • David Eddings' The Elenium/Tamuli books feature Elene contempt for Styrics (verging on medieval attitudes towards the Jews). The Styrics in turn detest the Elenes (with good reason, considering past atrocities) and the Delphae. Just for fun, people in the subject kingdoms of the Tamuli empire refer to their rulers as "godless yellow dogs" (a vile slur; as Oscagne points out, "We have gods. Give me a few moments and I might even be able to remember some of their names"). The distinctly Nazi-esque Cyrgai consider everyone inferior. And, to extend this a bit further, trolls don't like being called ogres.
  • In David Gerrold's Chess with a Dragon, human beings are treated with open contempt by other sentient species, for being mammals. Most sentient races in the galaxy evolved from dinosaur- or bird-analogues, and consider mammals to be revolting vermin, if not bite-sized snacks.
  • Vampires and werewolves in Twilight.
  • The fairies in Artemis Fowl are prejudiced against humans. This is presented as partly justified in the sense that, to some extent, Humans Are the Real Monsters, but to some extent it's obviously a product of the fairies' recognisably human limitations of perspective. The main reason cited is how unecological human actions are, but a favorite complaint is also how disgusting it's human toilets are indoors. The fairy races are also intolerant of each other, but with at least one being Exclusively Evil, it's not surprising.
    • As of The Atlantis Complex, we see Turnball Root commenting on how the fairies are wasting resources to the point of throwing away something that would have only taken a dab of silicon gel to fix. The fact that it's also a mastercomputer of a space probe makes this an example of bad security as well.
  • Done with a twist in Kit Whitfield's Benighted in that what we would regard as normal humans are a despised minority in a world of werewolves.
  • In The Witcher saga, the main character is threatened as a "freak", despite the fact that he saves people from monsters. Elves must lives in reservations, most of the people think that "good Elf is a dead Elf", and if you have an Elf in your family tree, you cannot, for example, get a wedding in a city. Other races are threatened in a similar way by humans. And in the last book, there's another group of Elves, that escaped to another dimension, murdered and enslaved its humans. And the Unicorns hate all the Elves for that.
    • One of local dwarf stand-ins mentioned that elves weren't that friendly themselves until humans arrived -- "Oh, now when it's their turn to be kicked around it's suddenly 'we, the Old Races', right".
  • In Generation Dead, teenagers all over America are coming back from the dead. Some are just like regular teenagers, only slower talking and with a lower body temperature. Others are very slow and can barely walk. The "zombies" are every minority that ever existed combined. How they are treated is almost like how black people were treated in the Deep South. The high and low functioning is almost like mental retardation. The series even arguably addresses discrimination against AIDS sufferers in the early 80's with the death of Adam Layman, who was considered an all-American pillar of the community. When he comes back as a zombie, he is treated with scorn and disgust similar to that of one of the most famous AIDS sufferers, Ryan White.
  • This is the central theme in the novel Vampire High, which is about a boy whose family moves to a small town where about half of the inhabitants are Friendly Neighborhood Vampires who call themselves jenti. The town is very self-segregated, with an unspoken rule that humans will not go in to 'jenti' stores and vice versa. After getting kicked out of the public school, he ends up attending the jenti school because vampires will die in water and the school needs a water polo team.
  • In the Honor Harrington series, the use of genetically-modified troops during Old Earth's Final War has led to widespread prejudice against genetically-modified humans ("Genie" is sometimes cited as an in-universe slur against GM humans, though it rarely actually appears in dialogue).
  • Un Lun Dun features largely irrational racism between living beings and ghosts. Woe to the only known half-breed: everybody mistrusts him. All the more noticeable as the inhabitants of the eponymous city otherwise display extraordinary diversity and tolerance.
  • Because the titular human society is so militaristic and xenophobic, this trope is everywhere in the Codex Alera. The Marat are usually called barbarians, are constantly said to have sex with animals, and eat people (although depending on how you read it, both the first one and definitely the last one turn out to be actually true). On the other hand, the Alerans are also prejudiced against the Canim and the Icemen, both of whom are far more complex than humans depict them.
    • Of course, both the Marat and the Canim are also hideously racist against the Alerans. A large part of the Aleran speciesist views stem from being the descendants of a Roman legion stranded on a world full of hostile monsters. The only group that really gets off well in this is the Icemen, because the Aleran-Iceman conflict is really nobody's fault.
  • The Algebraist by Ian M. Banks. AIs lose a Robot War against their fleshy friends. The survivors in hiding are reviled as abominations with parallels of religious bigotry and racism. As the story progresses the AIs are implied to be most unlike the Killer Robot stereotype and the "war" begins to looks more like Kristallnacht.
  • The Firbolg of The Symphony Of Ages are a primitive and largely-savage race. Although their reputation as brutish and cannibals is well-earned, they are also intelligent and have a strong internal society. Despite this, other races have largely regarded them as monsters to be driven back.
    • The most telling example of this racism was a practice of a human kingdom bordering their territory referred to as "Spring Cleaning". Every spring the ruler would mount a punitive expedition into Firbold land and raze any villages discovered to the ground, leaving few to no survivors. As pointed out by another character, the Firbolg had not launched even a retaliatory raid within the lifetime of the lord or his father.
  • An important part of the ending of the original novella version of Enemy Mine, with humans and Drachs continuing to resent and look down on each other even after the war is over such that the lead character rescues his adopted Drach son from an insane asylum he had been put into due to his ties to humanity and goes back to the planet he was originally stranded on to create a colony for people who were willing to get past it.
  • Weiss & Hickman's Dragonlance has tons of this, the most readily available example being Tanis Half-Elven, he is accepted by neither his human or especially his elven kin at large. It seemed like nothing short of saving the world would allow him to be accepted by the humans, even after that most elves, save his wife, still can't stand the thought of him.
  • In R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt novels, most of the people react either with fear or hostility upon meeting Drizzt Do'Urden for the first time. This isn't surprising since dark elves don't have a very good reputation, but even after people realize he isn't out to cause trouble like most of his kin, they often still shun him.
  • Fantastic races is one of many features that makes China Mieville's Bas-Lag novels as fun as it is. Prejudice against non-humans is institutionalised, inter-species romance is seen as a perversion, and the Remade (people who've been freakishly transfomed as a punishment) are pariahs who are used as expendable slaves.
  • In Kim Newman's "Tomorrow Town", a group of 1970s futurists have set up the titular town as a projection of the year 2000 will be like (in their estimations at least). They claim to have 'evolved' beyond many of the divisions and problems faced by people in that time period, but at one point a member of the community makes a sneery comment to one of the outsider detectives in town to investigate a murder, calling him a 'yesterday man' in the heat of the moment. The detective calmly but pointedly notes that she's been very careful not to use that term around him, the clear implication being that it's a slur towards people who aren't as similarly 'evolved' as they are—yet more evidence that their vision of the future isn't quite as perfect and 'evolved' as they like to think.
  • Freaks vs. Normals in Gone (novel).
  • In Go Mutants there is a lot of prejudice against both aliens and mutants. This is encouraged by the government.
  • In Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series there is considerable tension between the magically oriented Inapt races and the technologically oriented Apt ones. Much of this comes from the latter having been the former's slaves before overthrowing and eclipsing them. Also Mantids and Spiders hate each other, even though they are both Inapt for reasons both have forgotten. Likewise Moths and Butterflies. Meanwhile any Ant will distrust another Ant if they're from a different city-state, Wasps look down on everyone else and everyone looks down on half breeds.
  • In the Disgaea novels the demons care much more about race then in the game, and worst example is Laharl’s aunt Yasurl who justifies violently abusing her nephew because of his half human blood and tries to have him assassinated because she thinks his blood makes him unworthy of being Overlord.
  • In Sergey Lukyanenko's Genome, the Specs and the Naturals have a deep-seated distrust of one another. The Specs consider themselves superior to the Naturals, while the latter see the Specs are freaks. The novel doesn't mention any actual violence towards either group, though. When the main character, a Spec, is hiring crewmembers for his ship, a man offers his services as a skilled navigator. He first asks if it is a problem he's gay, which causes the protagonist to be offended by the assumption, as this sort of discrimination is completely gone by that time. The navigator then adds that he is a Natural, which almost immediately causes the protagonist to want to reject him, but having just said that he's beyond petty prejudice, he can't go back on his word. This was the nagivator's plan all along. He later tries to find any flaw to use as grounds for termination, but the Natural proves himself to be an excellent navigator.
    • The navigator himself has an irrational hate towards clones, which Imperial law recognizes as human beings. Many humans also have problems with aliens, especially the people of Ebon, who believe it is their divine mission to rid the galaxy of aliens to make way for the "true children of God".
    • In Line of Delirium, another of Lukyanenko's novels, clones and genetically-engineered humans are illegal in the Human Empire by order of Emperor Grey (who isn't actually a tyrant, just a regular guy with regular prejudices). So, naturally, the two protagonists are a clone and a genetically-engineered "super".
  • In the Taltos novels, the Dragaeran treatment of Easterners calling to mind human racism and ghettoization of minorities, and the Dragaeran prejudice to Dragaerans descended from multiple Houses calls to mind various "purity of race" prejudices on Earth.
  • In David Sedaris' Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, racism in the animal kingdom is touched upon several times, notably in "The Squirrel and the Chipmunk", in which a female chipmunk's family disapproves of her squirrel boyfriend; also in "The Cat and the Baboon," "The Toad, the Turtle, and the Duck," and "The Parrot and the Potbellied Pig," in which characters make inadvertent "speciesist" gaffes.
  • In Red Handed by Gena Showalter, humans and aliens (or Outers, as they are called) don't get along and aliens are even hunted. This is explored more in the companion book, Blacklisted.
  • The Trope Codifier (as it covers the main image of this article) is The Berenstein Bears' New Neighbors. Some new neighbors (more specificially Pandas who are implied to have originated from China) have arrived at the Bears neighborhood. Although Mama Bear and the kids are okay with them, Papa Bear isn't. He also goes so far as to keep his kids away from them, and implies that the... posts that their neighbors are setting up are actually pieces of a spite fence. In actuality, it was Bamboo stocks for their dinner.
  • In Time Scout, persons with indeterminate genitalia or intermediate gender face discrimination. The response of some to "intersexuals" is well over the top. However, they may be vamping for the camera to help paint someone as a villain.
  • The wars between the various "monster" cultures of the web-novel Domina subvert this a bit. While angels hating vampires who hate kemos sounds like its this trope (and Mr. Exposition describes it as such), The Rant mentions that its more like a gang war.
  • Dwarves mistrust elves in Katharine Kerr's Deverry series. Their main belief is that the elves are all thieves, and go as far as placing enchantments on their own metals that run with light if an elf (or even a human with elven blood) touches it. Otho the dwarven silversmith removes the enchantment on Rhodry's silver dagger so that he can pass unnoticed, as a favour to Jill.
    • Humans also enslave The Old Ones who were one of the original races of Annwn before the humans arrived.
  • There's a lot of racism directed at Andalites in Animorphs by the Yeerks, who see them as arrogant meddlers of the galaxy. Most other species are openly hostile to the Yeerks, for understandable reasons.
  • Extremely pervasive in the Age of Fire Series. Most humans and elves hate Dragons, dwarves are divided among those who hate them and those who see them as potentially useful Dragons tend to see most other sentient races simply as food. There's also, in the first book, an increase of racism towards dwarves and elves by humans.
  • In Vladimir Vasilyev's The Big Kiev Technician, all "fantasy" creatures look down on humans, whom they consider too short-lived (which they are, comparatively). On the other hand, some of them recognize that this causes humans to be more creative than those who are stuck in the old ways. The protagonist proves them right. Additionally, it's revealed that there is a small group of humans called Longers, who can live for several centuries but are otherwise human. When humans in Big New York found out that there was a small community of Longers living among them, they slaughtered the "freaks", even though they have never displayed such outright hate for non-humans. This is explained by the protagonist's Love Interest (who is a Longer, as is he, even though he doesn't know it) as hitting it close to home that there are beings out there who will live for much longer than you'll be alive.
  • Both the Okeke and the Nuru have this toward each other in Who Fears Death. We mostly see Nuru oppression of the Okeke (according to their mutual holy book, Okeke are supposed to be slaves to the Nuru, and Okeke rebellions have a tendency to result in decades-long slaughters by the Nuru), but at least part of the oppression Onyesonwu feels from the citizens of Jwahir is that she is technically a Nuru because her father was one. Mwita's backstory involves him barely escaping an Okeke massacre of his Nuru relatives
  • One of the most important plot devices of Vorkosigan Saga. Word of God says that the author pondered "What is the meanest thing I can do to my hero" and then answered, "Make him a cripple on a planet that has a murderous Fantastic Racism toward cripples". On the other hand the series is set at a time when that sort of thing is becoming more muted at least among the upper classes of Barrayar, Miles is protected by his father's status, and anyway his friends and faithful armsmen don't seem to mind.
  • In Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series there is considerable prejudice against both vampires and weres. One character develops a near murderous prejudice against vampires when his son becomes engaged to one and being infected by lycanthropy will generally get you fired if your a teacher or in the medical profession even though it's technically illegal to.
  • In the Griffins Daughter trilogy, half-elves get it from both sides: The elves consider half-elves (or hikui, in the elves' language) second-class citizens, akin to African-Americans during the first half of the Twentieth Century. Humans consider half-elves advanced animals at best, abominations at worst. Not that humans and elves see each other much better: Elves see humans as rapacious barbarians. Humans (or at least the human kingdom in the story) see elves as creatures of evil, looking to steal the souls of men.
  • In Quran, Iblis the Djinn refused to bow before Adam, because Adam was made of clay and djinns were made of fire, which somehow makes them superior. Though, if you're a Muslim, you're gonna drop the "fantastic" part.
  • Averted, mostly in A Dirge for Prester John. John is terrified of Pentexore's inhabitants, but he warms to them over time. Other humans don't react so well when John leads them out into the world. The races of Pentexore themselves don't feel this towards each other. Unless you count the people on the other side of the diamond wall.
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