...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

“Magic” Obama: Kathy Shaidle posts an insightful piece by Brendan O’Neil. O’Neil writes that the pres-elect was the beneficiary not only of liberal guilt, but of a desire to vote for a black guy to demonstrate one’s moral superiority over the great unwashed (who supposedly won’t vote for a black guy ‘cause he’s black). (I’ve decided not to call him Bambi anymore—been there, done that—although, post-election, he has had that “deer caught in the headlight look” at least once or twice.) Anyway, the whole piece is well worth a look-see. What struck me in particular, though, was this paragraph (my bolds):

Not surprisingly, some black commentators have reacted against what Salon positively described as ‘the race-driven enthusiasm for Obama’ (6). Some blacks instinctively recognise that there is little progressive in white people voting for Obama as a way of ‘appealing to one’s better self’. In a scintillating assault on guilt-ridden white liberals, the mixed-race commentator David Ehrenstein argued last year that Obama had been turned into a ‘Magic Negro’ (the name for those black characters in fiction and films who simply ‘appear one day to help the white protagonist’), whose role had become to ‘assuage white guilt’ and to become for white liberals a force of ‘curative black benevolence’ (7).

That’s it! Obama is to American politics circa 2008 what Sidney Poitier was to American film in the 1950s and 60s (think Lilies of the Field)—the beauteous, non-threatening ‘Magic Negro’ who exudes goodness, shows up like a Deus ex Machina to fix things for guilt-ridden white folks, and enables them feel to better about themselves—and better than their moral inferiors.

It also strikes me that if, as O’Neil argues, what prompted many people to vote for Obama was their desire to display their bona fides as exquisitely senstive, morally superior individuals, and not because of his credentials for office (because, let’s face it, he didn’t exactly have any) then Obama is merely the latest example—and the logical conclusion—of Affirmative Action.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:07 | link | comments

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