History Main / RacistGrandma

-->--''Radio/ImSorryIHaventAClue''

See also NaziGrandpa, InnocentBigot, EvilOldFolks, PoliticallyIncorrectVillain, ScrewPolitenessImASenior, WhenIWasYourAge. %% The equivalent at the opposite end of the age spectrum is the BabyBigot.

** Mrs. Pewterschmidt has found her husband cheating on her and leaves him. Peter suggests that Mr. Pewterschmidt get back on the dating scene, and takes him out to a club. Mr. Pewterschmidt sees a black man at the club and thinks he's a waiter or servant, and refers to him as "boy," which causes the woman that Mr. Pewterschmidt was with to leave in disgust along with the black man. Mr. Pewterschmidt's first assumption upon noticing their disgust was the black man being "somebody else's" property (which is strange, because, unless Carter is immortal, there's no way he could remember when slavery existed). He also gives his own wife a hard time for being Jewish, something she's deeply regretted allowing him to do.

->'''Sheriff Bart:''' Good mornin', ma'am. And isn't it a lovely morning?\\
'''Elderly Woman:''' Up yours, nigger!
-->-- ''Film/BlazingSaddles''

Usually the humor derives from the irony of an elderly character using language one would normally associate with a fiery young skinhead. However, it can also be TruthInTelevision for 21st-century demographics. Although obviously not all old people are bigots, old people are more likely to subscribe to pre-civil rights cultural beliefs and are more likely to say [[http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2007/09/25/why-grandpa-talks-like-chris-rock-in-nc-17-mode.aspx inappropriate thoughts out loud]]. However, this tends to be counterbalanced by the fact that they were raised in a "more polite" era than ours. (''More'' polite, not "polite".) Take [[Series/AllInTheFamily Archie Bunker]], for instance, who took care to substitute "spade" for "nigger", "hebe" for "kike", etc. It can also be [[MistakenForRacist accidental]] if the grandma is using what [[FairForItsDay was an acceptable term]] when she was younger. Furthermore, elderly people whose views about minorities really did change with the times may suddenly begin spouting offensive beliefs from their youths if they're suffering from senile dementia, and people might become bigoted with age due to bitterness about growing old causing people to develop a hostile attitude against most things or even everything in the modern world.

* ''Manga/{{Lady}}'': Duke Warbawn grandfather dislikes that his son chose to marry a Japanese woman and excludes Lynn (half Japanese) as his grandchild, while showering her half sister, Sarah (fully white British) with attention. [[spoiler: That is until Lynn wins a horse race and competes as the British representative for the Olympics, after which his racism just poofs into nowhere and he finally acknowledges her.]]

* In ''Manga/{{Lady}}'', [[TheHero Lynn Russell]]'s grandfather refuses to acknowledge her as his grandchild because she's half-Japanese and dislikes that his son chose to marry a Japanese woman. Ironically, [[https://mediaproxy.tvtropes.org/width/350/https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lynn_russell.jpg Lynn]] has a StrongFamilyResemblance to [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/grandpa_25.png him]].

* ''Anime/{{Daltanious}}'': [[FantasticRacism Alien]] example. Dr. Earl doesn't hide the fact that he looks down on non-Heliosians, even if they respect him like Manabu. He only cares about Kento[[note]]Half-human, half-Heliosian[[/note]] for his AlienPrince factor and looks down on his friends for being ordinary humans. In episode 4, he reveals the rooms he has for them at the base - Kento's is exquisite, lit by a studded chandelier, draped in tapestries of many colours, and has a throne, while the others have one that doesn't even have a lightbulb and is covered in cobwebs. Not only is it much smaller in size, but it's also expected to house ''six'' people. Manabu straight-up calls it discrimination, but Earl insists it's the norm. Kento, being [[{{Jerkass}} Kento]], grins and happily accepts this, much to their anger.
-->'''Earl:''' ''"Your origins are different from that of Prince Kento's! You cannot have the same treatment!"''

* In ''Manga/{{Lady}}'', [[TheHero Lynn Russell]]'s grandfather refuses to acknowledge her as his grandchild because she's half-Japanese and dislikes that his son chose to marry a Japanese woman.

Usually the humor derives from the irony of an elderly character using language one would normally associate with a fiery young skinhead. However, it can also be TruthInTelevision for 21st century demographics. Although obviously not all old people are bigots, old people are more likely to subscribe to pre-civil rights cultural beliefs and are more likely to say [[http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2007/09/25/why-grandpa-talks-like-chris-rock-in-nc-17-mode.aspx inappropriate thoughts out loud]]. However, this tends to be counterbalanced by the fact that they were raised in a "more polite" era than ours. (''More'' polite, not "polite".) Take [[Series/AllInTheFamily Archie Bunker]], for instance, who took care to substitute "spade" for "nigger", "hebe" for "kike", etc. It can also be [[MistakenForRacist accidental]] if the grandma is using what [[FairForItsDay was an acceptable term]] when she was younger. Furthermore, elderly people whose views about minorities really did change with the times may suddenly begin spouting offensive beliefs from their youths if they're suffering from senile dementia, and people might become bigoted with age due to bitterness about growing old causing people to develop a hostile attitude against most things or even everything in the modern world.

* ''Anime/{{Daltanious}}'': [[FantasticRacism Alien]] example. Dr. Earl doesn't hide the fact that he looks down on non-Heliosians, even if they're ones that respect him like Manabu. He only cares about Kento[[note]]Half-human, half-Heliosian[[/note]] for his AlienPrince factor and looks down on his friends for being ordinary humans. In episode 4, he reveals the rooms he has for them at the base - Kento's is exquisite, lit by a studded chandelier, draped in tapestries of many colours, has a throne and , while the others have one that doesn't even have a lightbulb and is covered in cobwebs. Not only is it much smaller in size, but it's also expected to house ''six'' people. Manabu straight up calls it discrimination, but Earl insists it's the norm. Kento, being [[{{Jerkass}} Kento]], grins and happily accepts this, much to their anger.

* ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'': Joseph Joestar hates Japanese people, and is shown smacking a guy just for being Japanese in the last page of ''[[Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureBattleTendency Battle Tendency]]''. In his case, however, it's not about ethnicity - it's because ever since his daughter married a Japanese man, he rarely sees her. Even then, it's an exaggeration, and he grows out of it anyway, since he shows no hate with all the Japanese people he interacts with in the next two parts, moreso the Japan-placed ''[[Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureDiamondIsUnbreakable Diamond is Unbreakable]]''. Likewise, any genuine disdain would've been browbeat out of him by his grandmother, who averted this trope, notably, as the time periods we see of her own life were not kind to blacks, and yet she and Joseph treat the latter's newfound friend Smokey, an African-American in 1930s New York, as a dear friend. He also likes his SONY Walkman.

* In his comedy special ''Bigger and Blacker'', Creator/ChrisRock says old black men are the most racist people. "Nothing more racist than a old black man, you know why? 'Cause the old black man went through some real racism. He ain't go through that 'I can't get a cab' shit. He ''was'' the cab! White man just jump on his back: 'Main Street!'"

* ''[[ComicBook/RatMan1989 Rat-Man]]'' parodies this with Brakko's mother in law: she's horribly racist, insults Brakko because he's black always using ''that'' word, continuously tells her daughter to dump Brakko and marry a white man... [[BoomerangBigot And is black herself, just like her daughter]] ([[NWordPrivileges also explaining how the author got away with her using the n-word]]).

* In the Literature/{{Discworld}} of Creator/AAPessimal, Assassin Johanna Smith-Rhodes is originally from [[UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica Rimwards Howondaland]]. She has been living in Ankh-Morpork for over two decades and has been changed by the city. Her three daughters were born there. Johanna quietly dreads her parents' annual visit. Her [[MamaBear mother]] and [[PapaWolf father]] are fundamentally decent people. But they are from a country where UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra is still very much a going concern. Therefore both, especially her mother, are bound to express [[AmoralAfrikaner some unreformed opinions]], even by default, that don't fly too well in a multi-racial and multi-species city like Ankh-Morpork. Her mother isn't even especially racist. But she cannot help thinking and talking like an AmoralAfrikaner, which can appall her grand-daughters.

* ''Fanfic/TheGolds'': Moe French seemed to be in the band-camp of people that saw his own granddaughter as a threat and joined in on the mob that declared her a monster.

* ''Film/AnnieHall'': "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. This, despite Alvy complimenting the ham Annie's mother cooked, something a religious Jew would ''never'' be allowed to eat.

* In ''Film/BlazingSaddles'', the black sheriff wishes an elderly woman a good morning. Her reply is, "Up yours, nigger!" She later apologizes once the sheriff does the town a good service, but then asks him not to reveal to anyone else that she spoke to him, showing that her newfound tolerance only goes so far. Keep in mind, this is the 19th century and nearly ''all'' the townsfolk are openly racist.

* ''Film/GranTorino'' deconstructs this trope: The whole point of the movie is that Walt realizes the people at whom he has being directing racial slurs all his life aren't so different, that his experience as a soldier let him know much more about death than about life, and that explains why he is so lonely and sad.
* Buck from ''Film/MonstersBall'' is the racist father of Hank. Buck's beliefs have been pushed onto his son growing up. He is also a mysogynist along with just being a generally terrible person.

* Played with in ''Film/OutOfTime''. A local police chief (who's black) becomes embroiled in a series of crimes. When an older white woman who saw him the scene of a crime points him out, everyone assumes that this trope is in effect. The woman doesn't help her case when she points to another black man nearby and says that maybe ''he's'' the man she saw.

* ''Literature/AdrianMole'': In ''Secret Diary'', Adrian's Grandma is not keen on black, brown, yellow, Irish, Jewish or foreign people.
* ''Literature/BurningUp'' by Caroline B. Cooney has this trope as one of the ongoing factors. The protagonist is doing a report on a barn fire that almost killed a Black teacher in her hometown during the 1960s, and is beginning to discover a rather ugly side to her beloved grandparents and the community she's grown up in. [[spoiler: It turns out no, her grandparents didn't start the fire, but they also did nothing to help the teacher. They simply stood aside and watched the barn burn while making racist jokes about how they were finally able to get rid of the teacher.]]

* "Everything That Rises Must Converge", a Creator/FlanneryOConnor short story, centers around a man taking his elderly mother on a bus ride to the YMCA. While on the bus, the old woman condescendingly offers a little black boy a penny, and gets called on it by the boy's mother. After getting off the bus, the woman's son confronts her about her racism and she is implied to have a stroke in response.

* ''Literature/GoodOmens'': Sergeant Shadwell isn't a grandfather (thank God), but is racist towards just about everything and everyone.
--> Shadwell hated all Southerners, and by inference, lived at the North Pole.

** In ''Literature/{{Barrayar}}'', Count Piotr is so anti-mutant that he tries to bribe the doctor who is treating his grandson's fetus (damaged and in an artificial womb because his mother was pregnant during a chemical attack) to kill the child. He also ejects Aral and Cordelia from Vorkosigan House, and later on it is revealed that he tried to murder Miles in his crib with his own hands, prevented only by Miles' bodyguard. Miles ''has'' a bodyguard from birth because Piotr is not the only racist grandma around. He does get a ''bit'' better later on, after Miles's intelligence begins to show; he is still a prejudiced, reactionary, embittered old man, but he not only stops trying to kill Miles, but actually becomes a (rather distant and authoritarian) mentor figure.

* In "Yee-Haw," the second episode to ''Series/NineOneOneLoneStar,'' an elderly woman calls the fire department on her neighbors for using a BBQ pit that was spreading smoke into her yard. The neighbors, who turn out to be Hispanic, come out and the father tells the team that the woman is a racist who once called the cops on them during his daughter's birthday party just because she saw them waving around a bat at a pinata. When Owen is about to make a citizen arrest on her for making a nuisance 9-1-1 call, the woman tries to fake a heart attack. But when Marjan tries to perform CPR on her, the woman refuses because Marjan is Muslim. The woman then asks Owen to do it, but he says he can't beacuse he isn't CPR certified. She then asks T.K. to do it, but quickly changes her mind after he admits that he's gay. She then turns to Judd, who just says "no." To try and prove that she's not racist, the woman asks Paul, who's African-American, to give her CPR. But when Paul admits that he's transgender, the woman just gives up and tells Owen to arrest her.

* ''Series/BobHeartsAbishola'': Bob's mother Dottie says very racially insensitive things, such as referring to Asians as "chopstick people" and suggesting that Bob take Abishola out to some place she'd be more comfortable--where they eat with their fingers. [[InnocentBigot None of it is said in a malicious way, though]]. She seems to have overcome this following [[spoiler:her stroke]], befriending Abishola and her family. Based on what we hear, Bob's late father Max was pretty racist himself, not allowing non-white workers to be supervisors.

** Parodied with Pierce's father Cornelius Hawthorne, who's so old and racist that he makes Pierce seem young and open-minded by comparison. Among other things: he talks and dresses like a 19th century Southern plantation owner, he wears a toupee made from carved ivory because he thinks ordinary toupee hair is "harvested from the heads of the godless Oriental", and he's so racist that he hates Jeff and Britta for being Welsh and Swedish.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': A "sexist grandpa" variation: In "[[Recap/DoctorWho2017CSTwiceUponATime Twice Upon A Time]]", the twelfth Doctor encounters the first Doctor, who repeatedly makes sexist remarks. The values dissonance is played for comedy each time:
-->'''First''': I am the Doctor, and this is my...my nurse. I realize that seems a little improbable, because he's a man. Older gentlemen, like women, can be put to use.\\

* ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' has the dowager Duchess Lady Violet Crawley who carries her distinctly 19th century views throughout her time on the show.

** Male example: In one episode, Drew writes a speech to one of the store's directors to show how well the store is doing, only for the director to highjack the speech and go on a racist and homophobic rant.
** In an earlier episode, Drew wanted to quit his dead end job, and asked his dad to talk to one of his buddies if he could get hired in one of their companies. They invited Drew, Lewis, and Oswald [[BrotherhoodOfFunnyHats to their lodge]] to talk about possible employment opportunities. Drew ultimately refused their offers because the members, old white men, spent their time in the lodge telling racist jokes.
* In ''{{Series/ER}}'', one old lady once said to Benton that she is uncomfortable with a black doctor examining her. Oh, and that lady? [[BoomerangBigot She was black, too.]]

* The protagonists on ''Series/GoodGirls'' have a need to raise a lot of money or else be murdered. They devise a plan to rob Marion, the grandmother of Annie's vile boss Boomer. She consoles herself with her grandson's (possibly fictional) fiancee being only half-Mexican and makes Ruby (who's black) do housework for her while exempting Beth and Annie (both white.)
* In ''Series/GraceUnderFire'', Grace's former mother-in-law, Jean, shows some signs of this. One time at Christmas, she tries to give her granddaughter a Mammy doll, and fails to realize that it's completely inappropriate or why Grace is upset over it, and a couple of times when encountering black people, thinks she's about to be mugged. This once caused Grace to get in some hot water with her new black neighbors, and spent the rest of the episode trying to convince them that she wasn't racist.

** In "Franks Sets Sweet Dee on Fire" the gang attempts to do an expose series at on old folks home. The first lady they talk to says that the one thing she dislikes about the place "is the blacks", leading Mac and the others to immediately end the interview rather than talk to a crazy old racist.

* ''Series/MadMen'' has the elderly Mrs. Blankenship, once Bert Cooper's secretary and now Don's secretary (to keep him from sleeping with his secretary and driving her away). Even for the time period (the 1960's), she has absolutely no filter with her prejudiced views.

* In ''Series/RedfernNow'', Corral is an Aboriginal Australian woman who is racist against all Aboriginal men, and wants her granddaughter to marry a hardworking white boy. She actually refuses to talk to her daughter because she married an Aboriginal man, and expresses distaste for Indians, people with poor English, [[OddNameOut doctors]], and, in fact, almost everyone.

* {{Lampshaded}} in the ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E22TheSavageCurtain The Savage Curtain]]", where UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln (it's complicated) calls Uhura a "charming Negress", then promptly apologizes. (Uhura wasn't offended, as both the term, and anti-African racism, are ancient oddities in her time. Also, ''Abraham Lincoln''.)
* [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] in ''Series/TedLasso''. Ted notices Roy Kent is in a bad mood and tries to figure out what's wrong. When he suggests that Roy had just discovered his dad might be racist, Roy points out his dad is in his 60s and is from a working class neighborhood in South London. Of course, his dad holds some racist views.

-->She's been around, she's racist, she hates foreigners with a passion\\

** Similarly, despite Pressley and Dr Chakwas being some of the nicest older crewmembers on the ''Normandy'', the former is initially distrustful of the various aliens Shepard brings onboard (until the end where he finally admitted that he was proud fighting alongside them on his personal entry that was recovered on the Normandy SR-1 crash site where he died) and the latter admits in the third game that while she considers her a friend, she doesn't consider AI like [[SpaceshipGirl EDI]] to be "[[JustAMachine alive]]".

* A recurring joke on ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' is to poke fun at racist uncles who either make family dinners during Thanksgiving uncomfortable, or who are outright barred from Thanksgiving dinner because they won't stop pushing their views on everyone else.

* In one ''Website/SomethingAwful'' "Fashion SWAT" segment, they discussed this in regard of an old lady: "In old lady hell, the candy is the delicious kind that everyone likes" "And people call them out on all the racist stuff they say" "Eh, who knows, maybe the time we get old, stuff we say will be seen weird 'Gee, I think someone should do something about all those pedophiles having sex on the streets.'"

** Mrs. Pewterschmidt has found her husband cheating on her and leaves him. Peter suggests that Mr. Pewterschmidt get back on the dating scene, and takes him out to a club. Mr. Pewterschmidt sees a black man at the club and thinks he's a waiter or servant, and refers to him as "boy," which causes the women that Mr. Pewterschmidt was with to leave in disgust along with the black man. Mr. Pewterschmidt's first assumption upon noticing their disgust was the black man being "somebody else's" property (which is strange, because, unless Carter is immortal, there's no way he could remember when slavery existed). He also gives his own wife a hard time for being Jewish, something she's deeply regretted allowing him to do.
** Peter's father Francis Griffin, a deeply-unpleasant man in general, has a special grudge against Lois for being non-Catholic. Among other things, he appended the "Just Married" sign on the back of the limo they left their wedding in with, "to a Protestant whore". His idea of ''complimenting'' Lois is telling her "Maybe you won't burn in Hell after all, you'll just go to Purgatory with all the unbaptized babies."
--->'''Peter:''' ''[happily]'' [[ComicallyMissingThePoint There you go Lois. You love kids!]]

* ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'': Before Rocko meets Heffer's surrogate family, the Wolfes in "[[Recap/RockosModernLifeS1E4WhosForDinnerLoveSpanked Who's For Dinner?]]", Heffer tells him that his grandfather, Hiram [[FantasticRacism hates wallabies]], but Rocko shouldn't worry because Hiram is nearsighted. Heffer then claims Rocko to be a coyote, and Hiram [[IAmNotWeasel scoffs that he's obviously a beaver]] and bullies him for ''that''.

* Sapphire Robbins' elederly landlady in ''Film/{{Sapphire}}'', who has a 'No Coloureds' policy in her boarding house, and says she would have evicted Sapphire if she had known she was black.

--->'''Mrs. Blankenship''': (in reference to the upcoming Ali v Liston fight) If I wanted to see two Negroes fight I'd just toss a dollar bill out of my window.

* The Caroline B. Cooney novel ''Burning Up'' has this trope as one of the ongoing factors. The protagonist is doing a report on a barn fire that almost killed a Black teacher in her hometown during the 1960s, and is beginning to discover a rather ugly side to her beloved grandparents and the community she's grown up in. [[spoiler: It turns out no, her grandparents didn't start the fire, but they also did nothing to help the teacher. They simply stood aside and watched the barn burn while making racist jokes about how they were finally able to get rid of the teacher.]]

* Played very seriously in Creator/FlanneryOConnor's short story "Everything That Rises Must Converge", which centers around a man taking his elderly mother on a bus ride to the YMCA. While on the bus, the old woman condescendingly offers a little black boy a penny, and gets called on it by the boy's mother. After getting off the bus, the woman's son confronts her about her racism and she is implied to have a stroke in response.

* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': the elderly Sergeant Fred Colon [[InformedAttribute is a grandfather]] and soldiers on in the city watch despite being well over sixty. He is described as being racist - anyone who is not a white (human) male is treated with a certain disdainful dismissive suspicion - but "racist" in such a vague and inclusive way that nobody takes offence, and just treats it as an example of "ol' Fred".

Usually the humor derives from the irony of an elderly character using language one would normally associate with a fiery young skinhead. However, it can also be TruthInTelevision for 21st century demographics. Although obviously not all old people are bigots, old people are more likely to subscribe to pre-civil rights cultural beliefs and are more likely to say [[http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2007/09/25/why-grandpa-talks-like-chris-rock-in-nc-17-mode.aspx inappropriate thoughts out loud]]. However, this tends to be counterbalanced by the fact that they were raised in a "more polite" era than ours. (''More'' polite, not "polite".) Take [[Series/AllInTheFamily Archie Bunker]], for instance, who took care to substitute "spade" for "nigger", "hebe" for "kike", etc. It can also be [[MistakenForRacist accidental]] if the grandma is using what [[FairForItsDay was an acceptable term]] Furthermore, elderly people whose views about minorities really did change with the times may suddenly begin spouting offensive beliefs from their youths if they're suffering from senile dementia, and people might become bigoted with age due to bitterness about growing old causing people to develop a hostile attitude against most things or even everything in the modern world.

Usually the humor derives from the irony of an elderly character using language one would normally associate with a fiery young skinhead. However, it can also be TruthInTelevision for 21st century demographics. Although obviously not all old people are bigots, old people are more likely to subscribe to pre-civil rights cultural beliefs and are more likely to say [[http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2007/09/25/why-grandpa-talks-like-chris-rock-in-nc-17-mode.aspx inappropriate thoughts out loud]]. However, this tends to be counterbalanced by the fact that they were raised in a "more polite" era than ours. (''More'' polite, not "polite".) Take [[Series/AllInTheFamily Archie Bunker]], for instance, who took care to substitute "spade" for "nigger", "hebe" for "kike", etc. It can also be [[MistakenForRacist accidental]] if the grandma is using what [[FairForItsDay was an acceptable term]] [[HaveAGayOldTime when she grew up]], without being aware that it is [[ValuesDissonance now considered derogatory]] [[note]]For example: in the article linked earlier in this paragraph, the author recounts her negative feelings when an elderly man referred to someone as "colored" -- but this was in fact the politest term for black people when the man was likely raised, and the chosen way for most black people to describe themselves back then, like the NAACP. [[/note]] Furthermore, elderly people whose views about minorities really did change with the times may suddenly begin spouting offensive beliefs from their youths if they're suffering from senile dementia.

While it's tempting to think that this will soon become a DeadHorseTrope, now that the youngest people who came of age before the mid-1960s are now in their seventies and the average life span for most Westerners is about 80, one might also argue that some people might ''become'' bigoted with age. Bitterness about growing old might cause certain people to develop a hostile attitude against most things or even everything in the modern world -- ''[[FormerTeenRebel even of things that their generation helped to bring about in the first place]]''.

While it's tempting to think that this will soon become a DeadHorseTrope, now that the youngest people who came of age before the mid-1960s are now in their seventies and the average life span for most Westerners is about 80, there is evidence that quite a few people actually ''become'' bigoted with age. [[note]]Bitterness about growing old can cause certain people to develop a hostile attitude against most things or even everything in the modern world -- ''[[FormerTeenRebel even of things that their generation helped to bring about in the first place]]''. For example, a poll (albeit a dubious one, since it took into account a ''very'' small sampling of the U.S. population) suggested that a surprisingly large number of ''Baby Boomers'' (now in their fifties at the youngest) are now uncomfortable with interracial marriage, despite the fact that most were children when ''Loving v. Virginia'' was decided. However, a legal case does not indicate popular support. At the time of ''Loving v. Virginia'', interracial marriage was overwhelmingly opposed by Americans, and it wasn't until the ''late [[TheNineties Nineties]]'' when it finally gained majority support.[[/note]]

** Suprisingly averted with Cotton; while he is extremely sexist, racism is one of the few {{Jerkass}} traits he ''doesn't'' have.

Usually the humor derives from the irony of an elderly character using language one would normally associate with a fiery young skinhead. However, it can also be TruthInTelevision for 21st century demographics. Although obviously not all old people are bigots, old people are more likely to subscribe to pre-civil rights cultural beliefs and are more likely to say [[http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2007/09/25/why-grandpa-talks-like-chris-rock-in-nc-17-mode.aspx inappropriate thoughts out loud]]. However, this tends to be counterbalanced by the fact that they were raised in a "more polite" era than ours. (''More'' polite, not "polite".) Take [[Series/AllInTheFamily Archie Bunker]], for instance, who took care to substitute "spade" for "nigger", "hebe" for "kike", etc. It can also be [[MistakenForRacist accidental]] if the grandma is using what [[FairForItsDay was an acceptable term]] [[HaveAGayOldTime when she grew up]], without being aware that it is [[ValuesDissonance now considered derogatory]], (e.g., in the article linked earlier in this paragraph, the author recounts her negative feelings when an elderly man referred to someone as "colored" -- but this was in fact the politest term for black people when the man was likely raised, and the chosen way for most black people to describe themselves back then, like the NAACP.) Furthermore, elderly people whose views about minorities really did change with the times may suddenly begin spouting offensive beliefs from their youths if they're suffering from senile dementia.

'''Christina''': It was the nineties.
** In a third-season episode, Dottie and Christina give Abishola jewelry that once belonged to Dottie's late mother (that is, Bob's grandmother). Abishola expresses her thanks and wishes she could have met her, but Christina hastily adds that no, she wouldn't, because Grandma would have definitely said unpleasant things about Abishola's relationship.

-->'''Douglas''': So Dad was, like, a racist?
-->'''Dottie''': It was a different time!
-->'''Christina''': It was the nineties.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheOblongs'': One-shot character Miss Hubbard is an old woman shown to have racist and xenophobic views, to the point that she leads a prayer for the destruction of the "mud races" and is shown to wear a chastity belt due to believing that all the immigrants out there might rape her.