[Vision2020] Obama the 'Magic Negro'

[keely emerinemix]

Language evolves.  In the 60s, "negro" was OK; it was certainly better than 
the other "n" word, and a step up from "colored," which was in use when the 
NAACP -- the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People -- 
was formed.

And yes, I'm a member.  Second-generation, I might add.

The standard for what's OK in referring to people is what the people 
themselves wish to be called (within reason, of course).  You surely have 
come to see other linguistic shifts over the decades, Tony; I doubt very 
much that if you saw a shabby little cottage, you'd refer to it as "a mean 
abode."

keely


From: "Tony" <tonytime at clearwire.net>
To: "keely emerinemix" <kjajmix1 at msn.com>
CC: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Obama the 'Magic Negro'
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 23:01:55 -0700

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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