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 .
posted this on one of the other related threads...
KOVR13 is a Viacom owned station. Interestingly, it was previously a Sinclair station. When ownership changed, so did their newscasters.
I can’t stand to listen to the shrill female voices of their reporterettes/newsreaders. Maybe it’s just my hearing loss frequency range, but the more they try to sensationalize a story, the more shrill the sound.
They’d probably be great as an opening act for any Hillary appearances. Warm up the audience so Shillary’s voice wouldn’t be so irritating.