The Magic Negro

I'd never really even have thought to apply the term to Obama. Magic Negro. He is magic, but he doesn't really seem very helpful. But it sprang into my awareness when I heard what John Kerry said about Obama.

Said Kerry in a viderview, "...he has an ability to help us bridge the divide of religious extremism -- to maybe even give power to moderate Islam to be able to stand up against this radical misinterpretation of a legitimate religion." My, isn't he special. And how, pray, wondered the interviewer, might Sen. Obama perform such a feat? "Because he is African-American. Because he's a black man, who has come from a place of oppression and repression through the years in our own country. ...everybody [in the world] still knows that issues of skin and discrimination exist, whether you're black or hispanic or asian or anything."

Anything but white.

Y'see, blacks are magic, to Sen. Kerry. They have more soul, and they share it. I guess. How else are we to understand that a man raised in Hawaii, who writes in his autobiography that he never faced racism during his long formative years, could still, somehow, partake in the oppression rampant throughout all of America, everywhere? How? Why, isn't it obvious? Silly goose! Because Negroes are magic!

Take for example Condie Rice. She's magic too! Oh, wait, I'm wrong about that. Even though in her childhood she knew children who died in racist bombings, she's not magic. Conservative Negroes are inauthentic race traitors, not magic.

An ugly fact from my childhood. I knew adults who used the term nigger-town, and nigger music. Well, it was the Sixties. They've evolved out of such speech patterns. As a teen, an adult for whom I had a great deal of respect and affection said, of Charlie Pride, a black country singer, "He's the singingest nigger ever." He meant it as a good thing. I remember being deeply shocked by the term. It seemed so vulgar, from this man I respected. But it was just the way he spoke.

My point? Words have only the power we give them. Ignorance is not the same as malice, and not all ignorance is a fault. It's not somebody else's job to worry about, or even be aware of, the things that would offend my innocent soul. We speak the way we are raised to speak, and we imitate what we're exposed to. Or we don't. I didn't. But I might have. It's only when we see that somebody else is deeply disturbed by something that we meant innocuously, that we have the obligation to change our habit. And, frankly, we don't even really have the obligation. Because we don't have to be polite. It's just, generally, a good thing. Sometimes, specifically, it's not a good thing. Which, when? Judgement.

Well, I won't go on and on. Let's just stick to the objective. Because Obama is black, he has a special ability to mollify moslems. If I said that I couldn't find any fault with such reasoning, would you think I was being sarcastic? That's deeply offensive to me, that you question my sincerity. You'd better change right now. Monster.

As for those people I knew as a kid, some of them were racists, and some weren't. But regarding Kerry, he's not racist at all. Y'see, he's saying that because Obama is black, he'd be better than a white president could be. See? Not racist at all.


J