Racist Grandma: Difference between revisions

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

 

 

 

== Anime & Manga ==

== Film ==

* [[Woody Allen]]'s ''[[Annie Hall (Film)|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.

* ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swJ0zhVJ8DU 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]]''

== 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.

* 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 [[My Country Right or Wrong|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.

* 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 [[Genre Savvy|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.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Race Tropes]]

[[Category:Racist Grandma]]