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Noble Bigot: Difference between revisions
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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Most of the heroes in ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' are at least slightly racist towards the Ishvalans.
** The surviving Ishvalans have also admitted that they hate Amestris and many of its people for what they did to Ishval. Many bluntly state that they may never forgive Amestris for what its people have done. However, most of them are willing to put this aside and work with the heroes to save Amestris because they want to end the cycle of unthinking hatred and vengeance.
** Many of these refugees (they're ''all'' refugees) are motivated by the opposite side of Scar's religious position, that Ishvala would not want them to be consumed by revenge but to survive and carry on their culture and blood. This is almost the only truly positive depiction of religion among the many, many appearances and references it receives over the course of the series.
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
* Rorschach from ''[[Watchmen]]''. He [[Does Not Like Women]] and is homophobic (both apparently the result of the abuses of his childhood that makes him recoil from any expression of sexuality), but he does try to do the right thing a lot of the time (albeit from his own f-ed up perspective). Similarly, earlier heroes [[The Cape (trope)|Captain Metropolis]] and Hooded Justice, both seriously racist. (Not homophobic, though - in fact, they were a ''couple''.)
* The Ultimate version of [[Captain America (comics)]] has bouts of this, although for the time he was brought up it's fairly light. Usually manifests in lines like "You're a credit to your people."
* [[Bulldog Drummond]] comes off as one during his appearance in ''[[League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'', especially towards the end. [[Values Dissonance|True to his origins]], he's not too keen on Jews and other minorities, but he still manages to look pretty decent compared to his overtly cruel, conniving and misogynistic fellow agent "[[James Bond|Jimmy]]". Drummond even pulls something of a [[Heel Face Turn]] towards the end. {{spoiler|Sadly, [[Redemption Equals Death]]}}.
** Captain Nemo is a very rare non-white example. He harbors a severe hatred for the English but still works to save British civilians. Also [[A Father to His Men|shows a great deal of loyalty to his crew]], many of whom happen to be white.
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* Slughorn in [[Harry Potter]] is a minor example. While he's one of the most sympathetic characters Slytherin House produces, there are times when he displays the 'Blood Purity' ideology that makes most Slytherins so distasteful; he assumes Voldemort must be a pure-blood due to his immense magical power, and expresses mild surprise when he finds muggle-born wizards with above-average talent, such as Lily or Hermione.
** Notable is his manner of viewing these things more as a statistical basis. Purebloods are simply more likely to be skilled wizards/witches than muggle-borns, people with relatives with skills will be similarly skilled, etc... However, this means that this is only his first guess. As soon as he sees what the student can do, he will update his views, his prejudices never lasting past simple facts.
* In [[The Grimnoir Chronicles]], Joe Vierra is a Portuguese farmer who spits at the [[The Great Depression|Okies]] that pass by his farm. But he still buys and adopts the daughter of one family when he notices that she has a potentially self-destructive power that needs training.
* Barrayar in [[Vorkosigan Saga]]. Honorable and valiant warriors who always keep their word but have an extreme prejudice against cripples.
== Live Action TV ==
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* Logan Echolls from ''[[Veronica Mars]]'' is something of a racist, and very much a classist. He ''really'' hates poor people. And yet, he's also genuinely heroic at times, and we root for him, and we cheer when he falls in love with Veronica and they become a couple.
* Daryl Dixon from ''[[The Walking Dead (TV series)|The Walking Dead]]''. While he still harbors the same racist tendencies as his older brother Merle, at the end of the day, he's still an effective and capable survivor who's a crack shot with both a crossbow and rifle, and he pitches in to help the rest of the survivors as much as he can. Wisecracks about "Chinamen" aside.
* [[Firefly|Mal Reynolds]] usually takes some issue or another with Inara's career as a [[High
* Gregory House, the title character of ''[[House MD]]''.
* Frances "Our Country, Our Rules" O'Brien from [[The Librarians]]. In spite of her frequently culturally insensitive comments and racially stereotyping (thinking that an Arabic internet banking site was advocating terrorism), she still manages to work with and even apparently care about a highly diverse group (many of whom she presumably does have the authority to fire). She's made more sympathetic by her unfortunate home life, her past, her panic disorder and the fact that at least some of her behaviour is apparently resultant from her repressive Catholic upbringing ([[It Makes Sense in Context|diving into Christine's breasts]] obviously suggested she did still have at least some bisexual leanings she was denying).
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* Zelos Wilder from ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'' was taught from birth that half-elves were disgusting, stupid, beneath regular humans, and confesses to the rest of the party that he feels conflicted about traveling with two half-elves. However, at the same time, he sympathizes with them far more than he does with his aristocratic background, and even before meeting the party, he stopped the Pope from passing various anti-half-elf legislations.
** Which is ironic, since the Chosen's bloodline, {{spoiler|in order to get as close to Martel's physical makeup as possible}}, was probably descended distantly from {{spoiler|Mithos himself, a half-elf}}. In other words, Zelos probably has some very diluted half-elven blood himself.
* It'd be quicker to list the ''[[Mass Effect]]'' characters who don't fall into this. Almost every one of your squadmates will have at least moment of mistrust, [[You Are a Credit to Your Race|condescension]] or downright hostility to some other species. Fans tend to point to Ashley as the "racist" squadmate, but she's actually one of the milder cases - she just worries about letting alien nationals (including a bounty hunter and a [[Cowboy Cop]]) on your prototype warship. The kicker is when Dr Chakwas, ship medic and all-around [[Cool Old Lady]], reveals some unexpectedly strong feelings about [[Just a Machine|synthetic life]] in the third game.
* Khelgar Ironfist from ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'' 2. Initally hates Neeshka because she's a tiefling. Hates Elanee because she's an elf. Through his sidequest though you can get him to see his attitudes are an injustice. If you complete that quest he never quite forget them but he far more willing to let the person's actions speak.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* [http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=426 This] ''[[A Softer World]]'' strip.
* In ''[[When She Was Bad]]'', [[Magical Girl|Amber]] is openly homophobic, which only worsens her conflict with the main character Gail. Of course, it's not like she has no ''legitimate'' reasons to oppose [[Villain Protagonist|Gail]]...
* Siggy in ''[[Dominic Deegan]]''... [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|briefly]].<ref>Briefly refers to the ''Noble'' part of the equation; bigotry is always there.</ref>
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* Cartman in ''[[South Park]]'', surprisingly, is turning into this in the most recent seasons. After his scary encounter with "Jewpacabra" and subsequent {{spoiler|proclaimed conversion to Judaism}} he argues in favor of an angry and malicious Torah/Old Testament god. And the entire plot of "Cartman Finds Love" revolves around his racist views manifesting in a need to hook Token up with the new black girl in class because they 'belong together'. The lengths he goes to prevent Kyle from mucking up is plan is pretty extraordinary.
* The ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' episode "Troq" featured Val-Yor, an intergalactic space hero who enlists the Titan's help to defeat an otherworldly menace. Unfortunately, his people are extremely prejudiced against Starfire's people, and he repeatedly uses the slur "Troq" (meaning "nothing") when speaking to her. This prejudice appears to be the extent of his negative character, however.
** The show still treats him as utterly irredeemable solely on that, though.
*** That was mainly because he was insulting their [[True Companions]].
*** They don't even demand an apology, though; they just get all pissy and make him leave. So much for teachable moments.
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== [[Real Life]] ==
* In the United States, the easiest targets would be the Founding Fathers, many of whom owned slaves. 'All men are created equal'? Then again, several of the Founding Fathers vigorously fought against the "slavery clause" in the Declaration of Independence, especially Thomas Jefferson. Pointed out by another member of Congress in ''[[1776]]''.
* [[Abraham Lincoln]], while staunchly anti-slavery, did believe that white people tend to be smarter than black people.
** In his own words from the 1858 "Great Debates" with Stephen A. Douglas, "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, or to intermarry with white people, and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the two races which I believe will forever forbid the two from living together on terms of social and political equality." Though, a number of his papers that were published posthumously suggest that those were not his beliefs, but he had to work within the political reality of the time; he was regarded as one of the most cunning politicians of his era after all. His friendship with Frederick Douglass undoubtedly helped to change his views.
** Lincoln also had a chequered history with the Indians, participating in the Trail Of Tears and imposing harsh measures on the Lakota to win support from Midwestern homesteaders in the North.
* [[Winston Churchill]] was for a time a supporter of eugenics, but considered one of the great heroes of all time by many in America and Europe.
** [[Values Dissonance|Support for eugenics was widespread across the political spectrum during the first half of the 20th century]]. To a lot of people, it was a noble, scientific way of improving the lot of the whole human race rather than just casting moral blame on "subnormals" and "defectives."
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*** Yet it was also alleged that he had a Jewish boyfriend, Hermann Kallenbach.
* [[H.P. Lovecraft]] was a known racist most of his life, his beliefs clearly evidence in many of his works. He has no care for blacks, Jews or many other minorities. After becoming aware of the horrors of the Holocaust and the Nazi party he changed his tune considerably.
** He was also married to a Jewish woman, making his casual antisemitism seem......very confusing.
* [[Walt Disney]] was also something of a casual anti-Semite in his early years (he grew up to a Catholic family in the rural Midwest during the early 1900s, so this really isn't all that surprising), though his views changed after [[World War II]]. Despite rumors to the contrary, possibly perpetuated by the [[Unfortunate Implications]] present in ''[[Song of the South]]'', Disney was actually on good terms with black people (as well as other minorities), which made him more progressive than most of the filmmakers in Hollywood at the time.
* In something of a subversion, despite making a number of racist cartoons [[Tex Avery]] actually had black friends and he gave them voice roles in those cartoons because it was the only way he could get them work.
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