[Vision2020] Obama the 'Magic Negro'

[Tony]

Keely, Dr. King used the term "negro" in his speeches.  Was his usage of 
that term offensive to you?

-Tony
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "keely emerinemix" <kjajmix1 at msn.com>
To: <heirdoug at netscape.net>; <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 9:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Obama the 'Magic Negro'


> Oh, goody!  A "female dog" reference.  You and I certainly are on a
> collision course to wacky . . .
>
> Most people realize that "negro" is considered offensive.  And did you 
> catch
> that its use in the article was an example of irony?
>
> My point was, and is, that you seem curiously unable to discuss anything
> from an original and non-puerile, non-belligerant  point of view.  Just
> once, no matter how much I'd disagree with you, why don't you weigh in on
> something without lifting from your mentor, Courtney, or degenerating into 
> a
> pale caricature of your other mentors?
>
> But that's just me, yapping like a Chihuahua.
>
> keely
>
> From: heirdoug at netscape.net
> To: kjajmix1 at msn.com, heirdoug at netscape.net, vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Obama the 'Magic Negro'
> Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 11:58:37 -0400
>
> Well actually Keely, I thought that the article was rather interesting. It
> seemed to have a lot more content and relevance than say the ones that are
> regularly copied by Tom or Art from the Army times or Wash. Post.
>
> As to my fascination you surmise from the dirty word section of the
> dictionary, I never knew that Negro was classified as one until your 
> recent
> revelation.
>
> As to original thoughts... I knew that posting this would get you to bark
> and yap like a Chihuahua.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: kjajmix1 at msn.com
> To: heirdoug at netscape.net; vision2020 at moscow.com
> Sent: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 9:34 AM
> Subject: RE: [Vision2020] Obama the 'Magic Negro'
>
>
> Have you ever in your life had an original thought?
>
> While the article you lifted from Courtney's blog is interesting insofar 
> as
> it dissects Hollywood's fascination with what other analyses have referred
> to as the "Black Savant Companion," I can't imagine why you care. If, that
> is, I thought for a moment that you grasped the actual content and the
> meta-content.
>
> Is it just that you thought saying "negro" would give you a thrill?
>
> Most of us grew beyond looking up all the "dirty" words in the dictionary
> when we were about 7. The steamliner of your maturity is drifting as far
> from the shore as the ship of your common sense and judgment.
>
> keely
>
> From: heirdoug at netscape.net
> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: [Vision2020] Obama the 'Magic Negro'
> Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 09:52:21 -0400
>
> 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 ââ,¬â? 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 ââ,¬â? 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 ââ,¬â? 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 ââ,¬â? 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 ââ,¬â? often several times a day ââ,¬â? 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.
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