Obama the 'Magic Negro'
By David Ehrenstein

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 Wikipediahttp://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.

[Sidney] 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!)

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.

That's where Obama comes in: as Poitier's "real" fake son.

Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record or
what he's written in his two (count 'em) books [that's for sure!], 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.

Ehrenstein, who says he's black, obviously hasn't read Obama's 1995
autobiography, which depicts his passionate ethnocentrism at vast
length. But, Ehrenstein's point about how whites think about Obama is
valid. It explains a lot of the mindless rage directed at me for
pointing out that Obama's autobiography doesn't say what they hope it
says.

Ehrenstein is just not cynical enough about white motivations. First,
I don't know any whites under 55 who personally feel guilty for the
status of blacks. Instead of white guilt, there is white vs. white
status competition, in which publicly-expressed attitudes toward
blacks can function as a trump card.

Second, as I wrote:

My late mom was also a big fan of Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier
back in the 1960s. To her, they embodied an admirable combination of
black masculine charm and white gentlemanliness. (In contrast, she
thought Muhammad Ali, who is now the more popular representative of
1960s black manhood, an uncultured blowhard.)

It sorely disappointed her when blacks burned down Watts in 1965. They
were not following the fine example for their race set by Harry and
Sidney. She would have liked Barack Obama, too, and for the same
reasons.

Nobody uses the term "example for his race" anymore. Today, we say
"role model." Even so, what many whites hope, deep down, to accomplish
by electing the well-mannered Obama as president is to make him the
supreme role model for all African Americans, eclipsing such
deplorable bad examples as Al Sharpton, Snoop Dogg, and 50 Cent.
Stuart Taylor Jr., a white critic of affirmative action, exulted in
The Atlantic: "The ascent of Obama is the best hope for focusing the
attention of black Americans on the opportunities that await them
instead of on the oppression of their ancestors."

The message much of white America hopes to send to black America by
electing Obama is: Don't Be So Black. Act More Barack.

Perhaps this explains why blacks haven't been all that enthusiastic.

In assessing what an Obama Administration might be like, it's
important to note that, not surprisingly, blacks who become beloved by
whites tend to espouse more politically radical, ethnocentric views in
order to compensate, to prove to other blacks that they are keepin' it
real. (Harry Belafonte in a classic case.)

For example, at the 1972 Republican convention, two black celebrities
appeared on stage with Richard Nixon: Sammy Davis Jr. and Wilt
Chamberlain. Poor little Sammy, a favorite of whites since the 1940s,
was psychologically tortured by all the hate mail and death threats he
received from blacks in response, and for the rest of his life
regretted endorsing Nixon. In contrast, Wilt, the epitome of the big
scary black man, never seemed to give a damn. He went on being
politically independent from the black mainstream.

Which one is more like Obama?

This tendency of blacks popular with whites to try to act super-black
in private was parodied in Dave Chappelle's famous Wayne Brady skit.
(Here's the video. NSFW.) First, Chappelle made fun of the brilliant
nice guy mimic who may be more popular with whites than blacks, having
a character say, "White people love Wayne Brady, because he makes
Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X." (Bryant Gumbel, of course, is
another example of this psychological dynamic: he's notoriously
anti-white man, although he didn't have a problem trading in his black
first wife of 26 years for a blonde trophy wife.)

In a later episode, Brady shows up and Chappelle apologizes, so they
go out for a drive, in which Brady turns out to be a psychopathic
pimp, killing a cop, shooting rival drug dealers, and roughing up his
streetwalkers, declaring "Is Wayne Brady gonna have to choke a *****?"
So, whites who think that Obama, the preppie from Honolulu who always
strove with all his might to be accepted as black by other blacks,
will upbraid African-Americans and persuade them to act more like him
just might turn out disappointed.

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