Can someone be a bigot towards their own racial or ethnic group?
Executive summary
Yes: people can and do express prejudice, disdain, and discriminatory behavior directed at members of their own racial or ethnic group — a set of phenomena commonly labelled “internalized racism,” “intra‑racial discrimination,” or “defensive othering” — and these dynamics show up as private beliefs, interpersonal acts, and institutionalized practices that harm individuals and communities [1] [2] [3].
1. What the question really asks: prejudice can be intragroup as well as intergroup
The core of the question is whether bigotry requires an external target; scholarship and advocacy frameworks make clear it does not: members of a subordinated group can adopt and enact the dominant society’s negative beliefs about their own group, producing intragroup hostility that researchers call internalized racism or intra‑racial discrimination [1] [4].
2. How researchers and advocates name the phenomenon
Social scientists differentiate forms — internalized racism describes adopting demeaning stereotypes and standards about one’s group, while intra‑racial or intraethnic discrimination covers actions like insults, exclusion, and policy decisions that disadvantage people of the same race or ethnicity; practitioners and glossaries used by racial equity groups treat these as linked but distinct concepts [1] [4] [5].
3. Everyday examples and mechanisms documented in the literature
Studies and reviews show concrete patterns: “defensive othering” — distancing oneself from co‑ethnics seen as closer to negative stereotypes — appears in immigrant communities (e.g., the pejorative “FOB”) and colorism manifests when lighter‑skinned members stigmatize darker skin within the same racial group; researchers also document intragroup dating biases and workplace uses of slurs that target same‑race colleagues [1] [3] [6].
4. Harm and measurable effects, including mental health and social fragmentation
Clinical and empirical work links internalized racism with psychological distress and lower collective self‑esteem, and scholars warn it increases intragroup fragmentation and perpetuates inequities by aligning private bias with public outcomes — a dynamic that can reproduce the very hierarchies the oppressed internalized in the first place [7] [3] [8].
5. Legal and institutional limits: recognition vs. remedies
Courts and workplace law sometimes struggle to categorize intraracial harm: litigation over “intra‑racial, color‑based discrimination” shows plaintiffs face obstacles when the legal frameworks presume cross‑race discrimination; in practice, interpersonal bigotry within a race can be real and harmful even when statutory remedies are limited or inconsistent [6] [2].
6. Alternative views, ambiguities, and why language matters
Some scholars stress nuance: not every negative act within a group is “racism” in the systemic sense; activists use terms like internalized oppression to highlight power dynamics, while critics caution against collapsing interpersonal prejudice and structural racism into a single label; sources differ on scope and definition, so careful use of terms and attention to context matters [9] [5] [1].
7. What is missing or unsettled in available reporting
The literature robustly documents intragroup prejudice and its harms, but gaps remain in cross‑cultural prevalence estimates, how intragroup bigotry converts into institutional outcomes in different jurisdictions, and the effectiveness of interventions — reporting synthesizes theory and case studies but cannot supply exhaustive epidemiology across all communities [8] [7].