Monday, January 16, 2006

the magical negro

This past summer, a poet buddy of mine introduced me to the concept or stereotype of The Magical Negro (surprisingly enough, Wikipedia has a link). Then over at the Women of Color blog, brownfemipower was talking about the same thing under the title black folks and the supernatural. And finally, just today I was reading about hollywood and the magical negro over at rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace (Actually, he kind of WANTS to be a magical negro. In fact, that was mainly the reason why I added him to my blogroll... i.e. he's a blogger of color who was concerned about politics and people but is coming from a non-mainstream spiritual perspective).
At this point, I don't think I would say that the Magical Negro stereotype is a bad thing. In fact, it seems kind of benign. (Is the public image of Martin Luther King an example of the Magical Negro who ended racism by singing a few songs?) There are certainly worse stereotypes out there. I'm just saying I'm starting to notice it as a recurring figure. Let me get back to you on it.
to be continued ...

2 comments:

Leila M. said...

reminds me a bit of the whole dances with wolves type of thing.

That being said, I did, however, enjoy Gloria Naylor's book Mama Day, which was quite majical, but in this case, there's nary a white character in the book, so i suppose it wouldn't fit ;)

Makes you think a bit about the Green Mile, though, doesn't it? Hmm, maybe even Shawshank redemption, for that matter... hmm. But they're still good, na?

Abdul-Halim V. said...

Actually, on the Wikipedia page there is a link to a paper which is all about Stephen King's magical Negroes. He seems to use them alot, the Shinning, the Green Mile, maybe the Stand, etc. and you mention Shawshank Redemption. Although if I'm remembering correctly, in the original novella "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" Morgan Freeman's character, Red, is called that because of his red hair and he's supposed to be Irish.

Although now that I think about it, if the original character had a Leprechaun type of vibe, then that would fit really well with the Magical Negro idea.