DAVID EHRENSTEIN, LA TIMES - Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator
from Illinois, is running for president. . . But it's clear that Obama
also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the
province of the popular imagination - the "Magic Negro."
The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky
20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in
the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply
appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on
Wikipedia. . .
He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they
feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American
history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized
black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress
holds no interest. As might be expected, this figure is chiefly
cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan
Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most
recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball
player whose very nickname is "Magic.". . .
The senator's famously stem-winding stump speeches have been drawing
huge crowds to hear him talk of uniting rather than dividing. A
praiseworthy goal. Consequently, even the mild criticisms thrown his way
have been waved away, "magically." He used to smoke, but now he doesn't;
he racked up a bunch of delinquent parking tickets, but he paid them all
back with an apology. And hey, is looking good in a bathing suit a bad
thing?. . .
Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record or
what he's written in his two (count 'em) books, or even what he's
actually said in those stem-winders. It's the way he's said it that
counts the most. . .
Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer
goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all
Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If
he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of
curative black benevolence on him.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-
ehrenstein19mar19,0,3391015.story?coll=la-home-commentary
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro
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from Illinois, is running for president. . . But it's clear that Obama
also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the
province of the popular imagination - the "Magic Negro."
The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky
20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in
the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply
appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on
Wikipedia. . .
He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they
feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American
history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized
black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress
holds no interest. As might be expected, this figure is chiefly
cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan
Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most
recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball
player whose very nickname is "Magic.". . .
The senator's famously stem-winding stump speeches have been drawing
huge crowds to hear him talk of uniting rather than dividing. A
praiseworthy goal. Consequently, even the mild criticisms thrown his way
have been waved away, "magically." He used to smoke, but now he doesn't;
he racked up a bunch of delinquent parking tickets, but he paid them all
back with an apology. And hey, is looking good in a bathing suit a bad
thing?. . .
Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record or
what he's written in his two (count 'em) books, or even what he's
actually said in those stem-winders. It's the way he's said it that
counts the most. . .
Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer
goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all
Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If
he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of
curative black benevolence on him.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-
ehrenstein19mar19,0,3391015.story?coll=la-home-commentary
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro
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