Racist Grandma/Playing With
- Basic Trope: An elderly person who carries racist attitudes and/or uses racial terms now considered derogatory.
- Played Straight: Alice refers to Bob as "that colored man over there."
- Exaggerated: Alice treats Bob like he's there to serve her even though he isn't.
- Justified: Alice is unaware that the term "colored" is no longer acceptable.
- Alice hasn't been around many different-race people in her life; anyone who looks different really stands out to her.
- Alice grew up in a time when her behavior would have been seen as normal and acceptable, and has a hard time accepting that times (and standards of behavior) have changed.
- Or, she has accepted that times have changed, but is going senile.
- Inverted: Alice is one of the most Politically Correct characters on the show, possibly even to the point of Political Correctness Gone Mad.
- Subverted: Alice uses no unacceptable terms in reference to Bob.
- Double Subverted: But she keeps staring at him because he looks different and/or regards him with suspicion.
- Deconstructed: Bob is one of her grandson Charlie's best friends and their relationship becomes strained.
- Reconstructed: Someone informs Alice of the social changes of the last few decades, and Alice makes an effort to comply with current social norms. (But not in a Totally Radical way.)
- Parodied:
- Lampshaded: "I'm sorry, Bob...Grandma hasn't caught on with the whole PC movement..."
- Averted: Alice uses no racially-insensitive terms.
- Alice never meets or sees Bob.
- Enforced:
- Invoked: Alice can't reach something at the supermarket, and requests (or demands) help from Bob.
- Defied: Alice doesn't want to be seen as racist, so she reaches for the MacGuffin herself.
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
- Played For Laughs: Almost always is.
- Played For Drama: Bob takes Alice's remarks personally.
I don't want to be the one who has to back to the main trope and tell Gran that she doesn't have N-Word Privileges anymore...