History Main / DeathByRacism

!!'''As a DeathTrope, all spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.'''

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice2010'': The mysterious murder of the King of Mars, S'turnn J'axx, is revealed to be an accident caused by the Priestess S'yraa S'mitt. She and Prince J'emm had been in love and looking to marry, but they were forbidden from doing so by the King because of Mars' rigid [[FantasticCasteSystem Caste System]]. While King S'turrn was a progressive advocate for the equality of Green and White Martians, [[FantasticRacism he still believed that Red Martians were superior]], so when S'yraa attempted to appeal to the King to allow her to marry his son, he rejected her heartfelt plea and angrily turned her away. Upset at the King's contemptuous rejection, S'yraa's emotions caused her to lose control of her magic power, and [[AccidentalMurder she accidentally attacked him, resulting in his death]].

Note that if done badly, this could be a case of StrawmanHasAPoint and FelonyMisdemeanor. If the target of the insult was himself an AssholeVictim, or the outburst the writers considered irredeemably racist [[UnintentionallySympathetic comes off to certain audiences]] as excusable, the death may not seem like the KarmicDeath it was intended to be.

* ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice2010'': The mysterious murder of the King of Mars, S'turnn J'axx, is revealed to be an accident caused by the Priestess S'yraa S'mitt. She and Prince J'emm had been in love and looking to marry, but they were forbidden from doing so by the King because of Mars' rigid [[FantasticCasteSystem Caste System]]. While King S'turrn was a progressive advocate for the equality of Green and White Martians, [[FantasticRacism he still believed that Red Martians were superior]], so when S'yraa attempted to appeal to the King to allow her to marry his son, he rejected her heartfelt plea and angrily turned her away. Upset at the Kings contemptuous rejection, S'yraa's emotions caused her to lose control of her magic power and [[AccidentalMurder she accidently attacked him resulting in his death]].

* The non-fiction book ''Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland'' by Jonathan Metzl explores the phenomenon of impoverished whites in the South and Midwest experiencing avoidable early deaths, because they consistently voted against policies that would save their lives and benefit them, out of resentment towards minorities who would also benefit.

* In the episode "Abominations" of ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'', Jax has to go undercover as a slave in a [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar Confederate]] plantation. After it's [[ItMakesSenseInContext attacked by zombies]], the plantation owner refuses to give Jax a weapon to help fight them off. He is then immediately eaten.

* In ''Fanfic/CoolCatAndTheBeautyOfWarAndDestruction'', this is how [[spoiler: [[UsefulNotes/McDonalds Moon Man]]]] dies.
-->[[spoiler: Moon Man was shocked, this wasn't how the plan was supposed to go! Luckily, he always has a Plan B. He had read Manga/{{Berserk}} and it was time to take a page out of Griffith's book. Moon Man gathered the corpses of his friends and sacrificed them in exchange for more power. However since he is a moon, the members of the Idea of Evil didn't like the idea of a moon-person amongst them since they are racist. They decided that they didn't want him in their group so they rejected him and Moon Man perished. That's right, a racist like Moon Man was defeated by racism itself.]]

** In [[VideoGame/Prototype the first game]] it turns out the Blacklight Virus was created by Blackwatch in an attempt to wipe out minorities. It backfired into a zombie virus which killed their science team, and later on you as the player character dismantle (brutally murder) the entire organization.

* At the climax of Film/{{BlacKkKlansman}}, the three most vile KKK members are killed when they [[ExplosiceStupidity accidentally detonate the parcel bomb]] they planned to use to murder a civil rights protester.

* At the climax of Film/{{BlacKkKlansman}}, the three most vile KKK members are killed when they accidentally detonate the parcel bomb they planned to use to murder a civil rights protester.

* Not really deaths in most cases, but the Creator/BruceLee film ''Film/FistOfFury'' (or alternatively, ''The Chinese Connection'') is all about a bunch of [[BullyingADragon stupid]], ''[[TooDumbToLive stupid]]'' people being racially discriminating and abusive against the Chinese and Bruce Lee's character and Bruce Lee personally himself, by extension and promptly getting the snot beaten out of them. In a more literal case, Chen himself: yes, Chen was guilty of a number of crimes, but there was absolutely no justice in his [[SuicideByCop "arrest" in the film's ending sequence. [[KarmaHoudini It is highly likely that no-one in the Japanese karate school faced punishment for massacring the students at Chen's kung-fu school]], seeing as how the Japanese authorities viewed the Chinese as lesser people.]]

* Evan and 3 racist skinheads in ''Film/Saw3D'' are placed in a car-based trap by Jigsaw that will kill all 4 of them in 30 seconds. To stop it, Evan has to reach forwards and pull a red lever, which rips the skin from his back as he's glued to a seat. Evan fails. His girlfriend's face gets crushed by the car after the jacks give way, Dan has his jaw and arms ripped off by the car as it pulls away, one gets driven into by the car head-on, and the car then collides with a scrapped car while going 70 mph, killing Evan.

Imagine, for example, a Chinese or Middle Eastern character in an American film. He may (or may not) have adopted the culture and speech of the country that he lives in, but he may also occasionally speak in his native language. While most of the other characters think nothing of it, there is one character who [[KickTheDog harasses him]], insisting he should only "speak '''Merican'', dammit!" That one character is also given the most humiliating death scene in the entire movie. What we've just seen is Death by Racism. When it happens to one-shot, [[VeryPunchableMan otherwise flat]] characters, it's more of a convenient way to treat the audience to a visually stunning death without having to display a title card afterwards reading "[[TakeOurWordForIt Trust us]], he was an AssholeVictim." Often, though, the killer will not even care that the victim was a bigot, having just chosen a target at random — which makes this more KarmicDeath. The killer might even be a bigot themselves, and it's just that bigotry was irrelevant in this particular killing. If the killer is also portrayed as an incompetent failure of a human being, see SubParSupremacist.

** While on Fishman Island, [[spoiler:Sanji]] almost dies due to his explosive nosebleeds, because no Fishman would donate blood to him.

** Subverted by Lilli, who refers to Nico as "the Oriental who looks at me like I'm a bug". Not only does she not die in the battle, [[spoiler:but it's revealed that she survived to present times, where she's an old lady]].

* In the beginning of ''R2'' in ''Fanfic/CodePrime'', Gilbert tries to work with Milly’s Mother, Kallen’s Stepmother, and the Black King to start an uprising in an Energon mine. However, unlike Gilbert, the other three are unwilling to work with the Japanese slaves in the mine, which leads to their deaths by the hands of Thunderhoof.
** Really, this could just be applied as a societal version to Britannia as a whole. While they have been acting racist towards other humans, their racism extends to ''alien creatures'' as well, calling the Autobots as mere "vile machines" and dismissing the Decepticons as mere aliens (even they too get called the "vile machine" moniker by Beatrice)...just as they are about to [[spoiler: sack the Britannian capital and later on destroy the entire empire.]]

[[folder:Film -- Animated]]

* Done with a heavy dose of Irony in the Creator/RalphBakshi film ''WesternAnimation/{{Coonskin}}''. A racist cop moonlighting as a low level mafia bag boy is drugged, dressed in BlackFace and the stereotypical Mammy character, forced into sex with a gay man and then is shot up by his fellow cops while he’s spun out on the drugs.

[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
* In ''Film/ComeAndSee'', a unit of Red Army partisans ambushes and takes revenge on an SS Einsatzgruppe which has been destroying Russian villages and slaughtering their inhabitants in various grisly ways. The German officer goes to his death, coldly justifying his actions on the grounds that Slavs are sub-human and a lesser species - to the faces of his Slavic - Russian - captors.

* Not really deaths in most cases, but the Creator/BruceLee film ''Film/FistOfFury'' (or alternatively, ''The Chinese Connection'') is all about a bunch of [[BullyingADragon stupid]], ''[[TooDumbToLive stupid]]'' people being racially discriminating and abusive against the Chinese — and Bruce Lee's character and Bruce Lee personally himself, by extension — and promptly getting the snot beaten out of them. [[spoiler:In a more literal case, Chen himself: yes, Chen was guilty of a number of crimes, but there was absolutely no justice in his [[SuicideByCop "arrest"]] in the film's ending sequence. [[KarmaHoudini It is highly likely that no-one in the Japanese karate school faced punishment for massacring the students at Chen's kung-fu school]], seeing as how the Japanese authorities viewed the Chinese as lesser people.]]

* Mary-Lou Barebone of ''Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'' is the leader of an anti-wizard organization and beats her adoptive children (who are implied to be the now-orphaned children of witches and wizards she has killed or had killed) when they display signs of magic. [[spoiler:In the end, she is killed by the Obscurus summoned by one of her adopted sons, Credence, after she beat one of her daughters for having a toy wand.]]
* Evan and 3 racist skinheads in ''Film/Saw3D'' are placed in a car-based trap by Jigsaw that will kill all 4 of them in 30 seconds. To stop it, Evan has to reach forwards and pull a red lever, which rips the skin from his back as he's glued to a seat. [[spoiler:Evan fails. His girlfriend's face gets crushed by the car after the jacks give way, Dan has his jaw and arms ripped off by the car as it pulls away, one gets driven into by the car head-on, and the car then collides with a scrapped car while going 70 mph, killing Evan.]]

* In Creator/{{W E B Du Bois}}’s short story “Literature/TheComet”, the main character, a black man, has a menial job at a bank, and it’s clear that his white boss is prejudiced against him because of his race. As such, he forces the hero to do a degrading task in the basement while the comet arrives, which unbeknownst to him actually saves the protagonist, since the comet emits deadly gas into the Earth’s atmosphere that kills everyone above ground, [[HoistByHisOwnPetard including the boss]].
* ''Literature/TheNakedAndTheDead'': While many of the officers and enlisted men alike are pretty racist or anti-semitic, [[spoiler:Wilson probably uses the most racial slurs of all them and dies from an AgonizingStomachWound]].
* The non-fiction book ''Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland'' by Jonathan Metzl explores the phenomenon of impoverished whites in the South and Midwest experiencing avoidable early deaths, because they consistently voted against policies that would save their lives and benefit them, out of resentment towards minorities who would also benefit.

* Toned-down example: the pilot for ''Spenser: For Hire'' has cool badass Hawk working as the bad guy's bodyguard — when he's ordered to kill Spenser, he refuses due to mutual respect. Bad guy yells "I told you to kill him, you goddamn nigger!" Hawk raises an eyebrow, clucking "Racial invective!", promptly resigns, and lets Spenser kick the guy's ass.

* The video for Music/FatboySlim’s "Don’t Let The Man Get You Down" introduces you to a nice-looking fellow named Don. Don likes a lot of neat things, like fishing. DON IS A RACIST. The middle of the video is mostly about how he makes his own life miserable by being mean to non-whites. At the end, he dies in a non-sequitur fashion, and an apparent SpoofAesop is that if you are a racist, you will die in some sort of KarmicDeath accident.

* ''VisualNovel/TheGreatAceAttorney'', the first victim of ''Resolve'' dies because she said a few too many anti-Japanese slurs to exactly the wrong person- [[spoiler: Raiten Menimemo, a journalist who'd earlier stolen a sample of a rare toxin and hidden it in his pen. He was so fed up with her attitude that he spiked her drink with the poison.]]

*** After recovering the items from the foreclosed home of an old man [[spoiler:who turns out to have been a former slave catcher]], you can kill him on the spot and actually ''gain'' honor.

* Downplayed in ''VideoGame/SaintsRow2''. [[RichBitch Jessica Parish]], the DarkMistress of [[TheBrute Maero]] the Brotherhood leader, comments that YoungGun Carlos Mendoza reminds her of her [[EthnicMenialLabor old housekeeper]] [[spoiler:and later has him tortured to death to spite the Saints]]. When [[VillainProtagonist the Boss]] finds out about this, [[spoiler:and has to put Carlos out of his misery themselves]], they furiously capture Jessica when she's making a bank withdrawal, [[PunkInTheTrunk lock her in the trunk of her car]], and [[spoiler:leave her at a monster truck rally, where her boyfriend unknowingly crushes her]].

* In ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption'', [[EasilyAngeredShopkeeper Herbert]] [[MemeticBadass Moon]] is rather prejudiced. The expansion ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemptionUndeadNightmare'' hits him with this trope while cranking his racism up to a cartoonish level, as he proclaims to [[PlayerCharacter John Marston]] that he doesn't like Jews, non-whites, Native Americans, Catholics, Fabians, socialists, homosexuals, Asians, British and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking women]]. He also claims the current [[ZombieApocalypse situation]] is the work of the "[[NinjaPirateZombieRobot Jewish British Catholic homosexual elite]]" to bring down America. About two minutes later, he leaves his store and is promptly ripped apart by some zombies while John looks on smoking a cigarette with a grin on his face.

* The non-fiction book ''Dying of Whiteness'' by Jonathan Metzl explores the phenomenon of impoverished whites in the South and Midwest experiencing avoidable early deaths, because they consistently voted against policies that would save their lives and benefit them, out of resentment towards minorities who would also benefit.

* Big Bob from ''Film/TheHillsHaveEyes1977'', in keeping with his status as the Carter family's resident {{Jerkass}}, is a massive racist and xenophobic. He winds up being the first of the family to die, and gets the most gruesome death in the film: being crucified and burned alive.