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Intimidating White Presence

107 statements
19 feature instances
17 referencing feature instances

Intimidating White Presence	type	FeatureClass
Intimidating White Presence	label	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence	page	IntimidatingWhitePresence
Intimidating White Presence	comment	The Opposite Trope of Scary Black Man, this is the Intimidating White Presence. While the Scary Black Man will usually be intimidating because he is big, strong, and angry, the Intimidating White Presence is generally more nuanced. Earlier media featuring the intimidating white presence will favor the outwardly racist, prejudiced type. In later examples, though, the intimidating white presence is as likely to be condescending, patronizing, well-educated, and of course, will aggressively deny being racist, though secretly feel oppressed by their existence. The Angry White Man may be a participant, but he's far from the only one. It's also very likely to appear in a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant setting. Sometimes the presence can be architectural rather than human, in the form of Stepford Suburbia. Like with Scary Black Man, a villain or even a group of villains simply being white is not enough to qualify them for this. There has to be an emphasis on the fears of people of color (generally black people) surrounded by white people. The intimidating white presence doesn't have to consist of explicit bigots, and they may not even be racist. They may be simply currying in the fear that can be generated by the racial clash, not necessarily a true believer in such ideology. Pragmatists who understand how to turn the fears of their subjects against them are also covered by this trope. Due to how ingrained this is in popular culture, the white person in question doesn't even need to do anything, necessarily, to justify fear of them; their mere presence can be enough. This trope has been largely associated with the 2010s and 2020s due to a growing focus on diversity in front of and behind the camera in media, particularly American media. However, needless to say, this is a trope that is Older Than They Think, dating back to anti-slavery literature. Though this pattern is most easily observed with black characters, it can apply to any non-white dynamics. Often overlaps with a distrust of police, due to suspicions of profiling and Police Brutality disproportionately affecting minorities. The Minority Police Officer may be called on to defuse the tension somewhat. Then again, that officer himself might be subjected to an intimidating white presence if he's the only minority on the force. Though neither demands racism, Bigot with a Badge and Obnoxious Entitled Housewife are very common subtropes, generally on either side of the gender line. This is Truth in Television. However, as a stereotype trope, No Real Life Examples, Please!
Intimidating White Presence	fetched	2024-04-08T07:00:40Z
Intimidating White Presence	parsed	2024-04-08T07:00:40Z
Intimidating White Presence	processingComment	Dropped link to LittleFiresEverywhere: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Intimidating White Presence	processingComment	Dropped link to OriginalCastPrecedent: Not an Item - FEATURE
Intimidating White Presence	processingComment	Dropped link to PrejudiceAesop: Not an Item - FEATURE
Intimidating White Presence	processingComment	Dropped link to TokenWhite: Not an Item - FEATURE
Intimidating White Presence	processingUnknown	LittleFiresEverywhere
Intimidating White Presence	isPartOf	DBTropes
Intimidating White Presence / int_18acb3a5	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_18acb3a5	comment	The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Will and Carlton are thrown into a holding cell on suspicion of being car thieves. There's a white guy in the next cell over, which freaks Will out, because, as he states to Carlton, if there's a white guy in jail, he must've done something truly bad to be there.
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The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_18acb3a5
Intimidating White Presence / int_3defe34c	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_3defe34c	comment	Discussed in an episode of Golden Palace, the sequel series to The Golden Girls. Blanche hosts a meeting of Southern women at the hotel and hangs a Confederate flag in the lobby, much to the chagrin of the Black manager Roland. The two have an argument over the flag's meaning—to Blanche it's a symbol of Southern pride and a reminder of her childhood, and to Roland it's something very different—but it isn't until another woman makes a racist comment about Roland that Blanche realizes her mistake. When she apologizes, Roland explains that the flag is a living reminder of the discomfort he and his Black friends feel whenever they're in a predominantly-white area.
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Discussed Trope	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_3defe34c
Intimidating White Presence / int_53a10f4c	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_53a10f4c	comment	The Twilight Zone: "Replay" is an allegory for this experience. Nina is unable to get Bigot with a Badge Officer Lasky and the other white cops to leave her son Dorian alone on the road, no matter what course of action she takes. Even when she uses the camcorder to escape completely and the story moves decades into the future, Dorian leaves home one day and Nina has an Oh, Crap! moment as she sees a police car coming around the corner.
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The Twilight Zone (2019)	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_53a10f4c
Intimidating White Presence / int_5acfd39c	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_5acfd39c	comment	Rush Hour 2: Humorously pointed out by Carter when he's on a winning streak at a casino. When one of the security guards offer to take him to cash in his winnings, Carter jokes that he was getting nervous about being attacked by the many rich white people surrounding him.
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Rush Hour 2	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_5acfd39c
Intimidating White Presence / int_6b0624d5	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_6b0624d5	comment	Emergency: Kunle, Sean, and Sebastian immediately agree that the cops and majority-white college environment will not be sympathetic to them if they seek help with Alice, the white girl passed out in their shared house. It's then played with, because their increasingly desperate flight from Alice's sister Madison looks completely different on both sides, before finally being played straight when they finally get to the hospital and get Alice help, where the police turn on them and hold them at gunpoint.
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Emergency (2022)	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_6b0624d5
Intimidating White Presence / int_71c35408	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_71c35408	comment	Midnight Mass: Hassan Shabbaz is Muslim, which appears to be a bigger barrier to his acceptance on the very Catholic Crockett Island than his race. The islanders are also generally more accepting of his son Ali because Ali starts attending Mass and turns away from Islam. However, the intimidation across racial lines is pretty clear when Hassan tries to intervene to save Ali from them. Led by the explicitly racist Bev Keane, she encourages the white congregants to hold Hassan down, sadistically forcing him to watch as Ali kills himself. Even the (white) heroes in the congregation are helpless and don't stop it.
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Midnight Mass (2021)	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_71c35408
Intimidating White Presence / int_7e4805b6	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_7e4805b6	comment	In Knives Out, main character Marta is a Latina-American woman of unspecified heritage; it's a Running Gag that every member of the all-white Thrombey clan refers to a different home country whenever they talk about her. Marta is the nurse to Harlan Thrombey, and it's clear that while she likes him, she's deeply uncomfortable around nearly everyone else in the family, especially when they use her as a prop for their arguments or treat her with Condescending Compassion. Things take a turn for the serious when Harlan is revealed to have left Marta the entirety of his vast estate and publishing company in his will, and the Thrombeys turn on her with a vengeance.
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Knives Out	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_7e4805b6
Intimidating White Presence / int_8e5e025c	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_8e5e025c	comment	Master: Jasmine gets flooded by white people chanting the N-word at a college party, and Gail struggles with being the black master of a college where the upper echelons are almost all white. Liv is arguably the ultimate example if, as is heavily implied, she's actually white but posing as black, given that she menaces Jasmine for making a complaint against her, and possibly kills her.
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Master	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_8e5e025c
Intimidating White Presence / int_8eb61265	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_8eb61265	comment	Come from Away: All of the characters who are outwardly racist are played by white actors (at least in the original Broadway cast and film): Plane People who express fear that some guy from the Middle East who got questioned and searched (out of racial profiling by a white volunteer processing the Plane People earlier) is on [their] bus, two white men who accost and accuse Ali of being a Muslim terrorist, the flight attendant who refuses to board the plane unless Ali is thoroughly strip-searched for being "suspicious" and have his religious belief greatly violated, etc. Muhuzuma, an African man who speaks no English, and his family (alongside a bus full of fellow Africans), are terrified when they see the "soldiers everywhere" in the majority-white town of Gander (and the surrounding areas). They are actually locals who put on their long unused Salvation Army uniforms to welcome the displaced Plane People. Bob, a black man from New York, spends most of the show scared that he would get robbed, shot, or killed for making the slightest wrong move, and highly suspicious of the residents. He wasn't written as black, but then a black actor was cast, and his character fell into place for the actor as someone who is very insulated and keeps to himself out of extreme(ly justified) fear of white people. Ali, an Egyptian Muslim, is wary around people who treats him like he has committed a crime. He says as much in an unsubtitled phone call to his mother right before two white Plane People jump on him and accuses him of being a terrorist "telling [his] Muslim friends where to bomb next". A hijabi Muslim American who comes to his defense is a black woman born in Connecticut. The unnamed Ganderite who connects with the Orthodox rabbi has hid his Jewish identity his entire life, even from his own wife, out of fear and the fallout of The Holocaust.
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Intimidating White Presence / int_8eb61265	featureConfidence	1.0
Come from Away (Theatre)	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_8eb61265
Intimidating White Presence / int_90c73dda	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_90c73dda	comment	Animorphs: Averted for the most part, with the team being made up of one white guy, one white girl, one black girl (best friends with the white girl), one Hispanic guy, a white Bully Magnet in a bird's body and an Alien (whose human form is a combination of all the humans). However, one example sticks out: In Megamorphs 3: Elfangor's Secret, the team find themselves in an alternate timeline version of Princeton University (one where the American Revolution failed and the French won Trafalgar). Marco notices that there are less than half a dozen women in sight, and absolutely no black people, then one student calls Cassie a very bad word indeed. Having just witnessed the death of her boyfriend and her best friend in very short order, the kind, sweet, good-natured Cassie smiles as she tells the racist that she can become white, no problem. She turns into a polar bear, opens her jaws around his head and roars in his face. Rachel reappears at that moment to complain that Cassie is stealing her act.
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Animorphs	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_90c73dda
Intimidating White Presence / int_9257f03b	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_9257f03b	comment	Midsommar: The HÃ¥rga are all-white, and the three non-white visitors (Josh, Simon, and Connie) all die horrible deaths: Josh's skull is caved in, Connie is publicly drowned, and Simon is strung open in a "blood eagle" formation. In Simon and Connie's cases, this is heavily implied to be intentional, as HÃ¥rga member Ingmar seems to be in love with Connie and punishing her for not returning his feelings, as he refers to her as his ex-girlfriend despite her obvious confusion.
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Midsommar	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_9257f03b
Intimidating White Presence / int_b9fa3a7	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_b9fa3a7	comment	Parodied in Undercover Brother, when, in order to go undercover and investigate by pretending to be The Whitest Black Guy, the titular hero is made to watch a ton of film footage of white people by Smart Brother. By the end of it, Undercover Brother is panicking about "CAUCASIAN OVERLOAD!" and how "That's too much white for a brother to have!"
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Undercover Brother	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_b9fa3a7
Intimidating White Presence / int_ba28e44b	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_ba28e44b	comment	Karen is a thriller/horror film based on the suburban white woman Obnoxious Entitled Housewife as the main antagonist. Her menacing of the lead couple Imani and Malik ranges between knocking over trashcans to trying to kill them.
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Intimidating White Presence / int_bd54ba07	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_bd54ba07	comment	Parodied in Blazing Saddles when Bart gets surrounded by the hostile racist townsfolk. He ends up taking himself hostage to get away.
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Blazing Saddles	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_bd54ba07
Intimidating White Presence / int_c4b7028	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_c4b7028	comment	A major theme of His House. The main characters, Bol and Rial, are South Sudanese refugees who have fled to London. Their nearest neighbour is an unfriendly, chain-smoking old woman who never waves back and tells it would be better if they went back. Their case worker seems to mean well, but is Innocently Insensitive and tells Bol he hopes he's "one of the good ones". At one point, Bol is approached outside a church by a tough-looking guy who says he has "got something" for him, but it turns out to be a welcome package the church group had put together. Still, the scene shows just how on-edge Bol has become. At one point, Rial asks a group of black teenagers for directions, hoping they'll be more sympathetic, but they make fun of her accent and tell her to "go back to Africa".
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His House	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_c4b7028
Intimidating White Presence / int_c4c6fe70	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_c4c6fe70	comment	Enforced in Ryu the Cave Boy where pale skin is seen as a bad omen. When baby Ryu is born with it, the Big Horn Tribe force his mother, Esta, to feed him to dinosaurs.
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Ryu the Cave Boy	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_c4c6fe70
Intimidating White Presence / int_c61253f6	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_c61253f6	comment	Get Out: Black man Chris attends a party thrown by the family of his (white) girlfriend Rose, which is entirely populated by white people (with black servants). He describes to Georgina who is actually the cult's victim that he gets nervous when there are too many white people around, and the combination of microaggressions and downright creepy behavior proves him right, leaving Rose the Token Good Teammate. And she's possibly the worst of the lot.
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Get Out (2017)	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_c61253f6
Intimidating White Presence / int_dd5c64bc	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_dd5c64bc	comment	The Black Mage: Tom Token finds himself accepted into a prestigious magic school to be their first black student. But naturally with all the students and facility being white and the former going off of second-hand information about black people, Tom's not exactly pleased about his situation. It's only Lindsay who at least tries to make him feel welcomed (though he needs to get over his own prejudices first).
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The Black Mage (Comic Book)	hasFeature	Intimidating White Presence / int_dd5c64bc
Intimidating White Presence / int_f1d35e6c	type	Intimidating White Presence
Intimidating White Presence / int_f1d35e6c	comment	Atlanta has several examples. In general, much of their intimidating white presences are of the "well-meaning liberal" type, such as when Van's friend is shown to be married to a white man who fetishizes black people, and when a gang of white people turn on an (also white) woman at a party in an angry mob after she tells Darius than a lot of black men are attracted to her (which doesn't bother him at all). However, the two clearest examples of them all are the wives from "Three Slaps", who are white women with eight adopted black children that they abuse, starve, and work like slaves before trying to kill them in a car accident (and are assisted by an also white, well-meaning, liberal school system), and Teddy Perkins, who is in eerie whiteface who holds Darius at gunpoint, nearly kills him, and abused his brother. Also invoked by a student in Van's class who paints his face white and defies Van.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Intimidating White Presence	processingCategory2	Prejudice Tropes
Intimidating White Presence	processingCategory2	Race Tropes
Intimidating White Presence	processingCategory2	White Index
Ryu the Cave Boy / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
The Bush Baby / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
Blazing Saddles / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
Emergency (2022) / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
Get Out (2017) / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
His House / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
Midsommar / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
Rush Hour / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
Undercover Brother / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
Atlanta / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
Midnight Mass (2021) / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
Come from Away (Theatre) / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence
Lovebot (Webcomic) / int_125a159e	type	Intimidating White Presence

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