Angry White Man
A Stereotype Flip in which a white person (usually a man, as the title suggests) sees himself as a victim of injustice or unkind behavior at the hands of minorities or turncoat whites.
The type first appeared in large numbers in the mid-1960s, when "affirmative action" became official government hiring policy. This meant that a white person could experience "reverse discrimination" by being turned down for a job in favor of a member of a minority group, since the place of employment had quotas to fill and there already existed a proportionate number of whites. Now that affirmative action has been reformed so that economic status is taken into account as well as race, it isn't much of a controversy anymore—so the ire of the Angry White Man has shifted to less tangible targets.
He's frequently exasperated by overly generous attempts to incorporate minorities into the modern American cultural fabric (or not-so-modern, for that matter); media stereotypes of whites as stupid, unfashionable, and/or "un-ethnic"; the supposed scapegoating of white people for everything that goes wrong in the world; or just the general feeling that he soon might be the Last of His Kind.
Will as often as not be played for comedy. If not... watch out!
Figuratively, the character doesn't have to be white, or a man. The trope can apply to any type of character who is constantly railing against discrimination.
Live Action TV
- The original prototype (at least as far as American TV was concerned) was probably Archie Bunker of All in The Family -- although, in fact, he was a lot less angry than many of his successors.
- Older than Archie, but far more British (and possibly more extreme), was Alf Garnett of Till Death Us Do Part, the English TV show on which Norman Lear based All in the Family.
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