Author Topic: 'Magic Negro'  (Read 1523 times)

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BT

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'Magic Negro'
« on: March 21, 2007, 07:37:19 PM »
Obama the 'Magic Negro'
The Illinois senator lends himself to white America's idealized, less-than-real black man.
By David Ehrenstein
L.A.-based DAVID EHRENSTEIN writes about Hollywood and politics.

March 19, 2007

AS EVERY CARBON-BASED life form on this planet surely knows, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is running for president. Since making his announcement, there has been no end of commentary about him in all quarters — musing over his charisma and the prospect he offers of being the first African American to be elected to the White House.

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 http://en.-wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro .

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."

Poitier really poured on the "magic" in "Lilies of the Field" (for which he won a best actor Oscar) and "To Sir, With Love" (which, along with "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," made him a No. 1 box-office attraction). In these films, Poitier triumphs through yeoman service to his white benefactors. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" is particularly striking in this regard, as it posits miscegenation without evoking sex. (Talk about magic!)

The same can't quite be said of Freeman in "Driving Miss Daisy," "Seven" and the seemingly endless series of films in which he plays ersatz paterfamilias to a white woman bedeviled by a serial killer. But at least he survives, unlike Crothers in "The Shining," in which psychic premonitions inspire him to rescue a white family he barely knows and get killed for his trouble. This heart-tug trope is parodied in Gus Van Sant's "Elephant." The film's sole black student at a Columbine-like high school arrives in the midst of a slaughter, helps a girl escape and is immediately gunned down. See what helping the white man gets you?

And what does the white man get out of the bargain? That's a question asked by John Guare in "Six Degrees of Separation," his brilliant retelling of the true saga of David Hampton — a young, personable gay con man who in the 1980s passed himself off as the son of none other than the real Sidney Poitier. Though he started small, using the ruse to get into Studio 54, Hampton discovered that countless gullible, well-heeled New Yorkers, vulnerable to the Magic Negro myth, were only too eager to believe in his baroque fantasy. (One of the few who wasn't fooled was Andy Warhol, who was astonished his underlings believed Hampton's whoppers. Clearly Warhol had no need for the accouterment of interracial "goodwill.")

But the same can't be said of most white Americans, whose desire for a noble, healing Negro hasn't faded. That's where Obama comes in: as Poitier's "real" fake son.

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?

The only mud that momentarily stuck was criticism (white and black alike) concerning Obama's alleged "inauthenticty," as compared to such sterling examples of "genuine" blackness as Al Sharpton and Snoop Dogg. Speaking as an African American whose last name has led to his racial "credentials" being challenged — often several times a day — I know how pesky this sort of thing can be.

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. It's his manner, which, as presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden ham-fistedly reminded us, is "articulate." His tone is always genial, his voice warm and unthreatening, and he hasn't called his opponents names (despite being baited by the media).

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/la-oe-ehrenstein19mar19,0,7971670,print.story?coll=la-opinion-center

Michael Tee

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Re: 'Magic Negro'
« Reply #1 on: March 21, 2007, 08:36:09 PM »
Pretty much my take on the guy, although the phrase "Magic Negro" is a new one to me.  He's an empty suit, a white man's black man, standing for nothing and as such a sure ticket to another well-deserved Democratic defeat if he runs for them.  Fortunately (I hope) Algore will rise to the challenge at the 11th hour and probably save whatever can be saved of the country while Obama returns to his natural state of invisibility.

domer

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Re: 'Magic Negro'
« Reply #2 on: March 21, 2007, 10:47:50 PM »
The title of this piece should be: "Ersatz writer spews sour grapes, gagging at the thought of a man who can put his (the writer's) identity to the test." Where is it written that a black candidate has to echo the blues, be scruffy like a tenant farmer, prefer black idioms, eschew success in school, shun out-group associations to prove authenticity, or heed the call of replicating the victim's lament. Obama is who he is. The varied cultural influences that have played on his life, perhaps diluting any one dominant strain of character, must be seen as a surpassing strength not fodder for casuists. Yes, Obama is nothing more, and nothing less, than what he is. In no uncertain terms, if elected, he will be the blackest president we've ever had, oh yes, and one of the smartest. His freshness (lack of Washington experience) should aid him in forging a path where hope, inclusion and reconciliation become ways of life rather than just words dropped from the mouth of a pedestrian mind seeking a faux dignity.

BT

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Re: 'Magic Negro'
« Reply #3 on: March 21, 2007, 11:15:00 PM »
Identity politics is overrated.

But i do agree with you Domer. Obama is who he is.


Ponders who Obama would be if he weren't Obama.

Universe Prince

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Re: 'Magic Negro'
« Reply #4 on: March 22, 2007, 12:00:40 AM »
Leaving aside for now the verbal equivalent of an eye roll at the criticisms of Sidney Poitier's acting career, I have to say I do not understand why some people want to criticize Obama for being a black politician with a generally positive message. Apparently some people think anything other than an angry, in-yo'-face, you-don't-know-what-it's-like message from a black man is the equivalent to giving in to whitey. It reminds me of the scene in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner where Tillie the maid is talking angrily with Poitier's character and accusing him of getting or trying to get "above" himself, as if she has some sort of right to define his life for him. Apparently we are not supposed to let Barack Obama define himself. We're supposed to reject him if he doesn't fit some mold of a proper black man, because if we don't, it's some sort of secret racism.

Maybe it's because I don't have any "white guilt" even though my skin is pale, but assigning to people what they should feel and how they should act based on the pigmentation of their skin seems to me at best a watered down racism. We all gasp and shake our heads at images of Stepin Fetchit, and cartoon depictions of black people with balloon lips and afros, but let someone like Barack Obama or Condaleeza Rice rise to prominance and it's all "Magic Negro" and "Uncle Tom" and "white guilt" and "oreo", blah blah blah yackity schmackity. Why do we even care what color his skin is? Why does that matter? Shouldn't we be discussing whether Obama's ideas are right or wrong, good or bad, valid or invalid? He could be blue, green or plaid. It's his ideas and his character that matter, not his pigmentation.
Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever.
--Hieronymus Karl Frederick Baron von Munchausen ("The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" [1988])--

Plane

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Re: 'Magic Negro'
« Reply #5 on: March 22, 2007, 06:04:02 PM »
« Last Edit: March 22, 2007, 06:05:38 PM by Plane »

Plane

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Re: 'Magic Negro'
« Reply #6 on: March 22, 2007, 06:08:03 PM »
The Measure of A Man
A spiritual autobiography
By Sidney Poitier

I have no wish to play the pontificating fool, pretending that I've suddenly come up with the answers to all life's questions. Quite that contrary, I began this book as an exploration, an exercise in self-questing. In other words, I wanted to find out, as I looked back at a long and complicated life, with many twists and turns, how well I've done at measuring up to the values I myself have set."
-Sidney Poitier

http://denver.yourhub.com/CastleRock/Stories/Books/Book-review/Story~282063.aspx