There has been an interesting discussion at World Magazine Blog on the song “Barack the Magic Negro.” I can’t believe how stupid people can be. The song is a parody of a column written by a liberal black man. Nevertheless, people have said that the satirical song is racist. Never mind that it was the liberal black man, David Ehrenstein, who called Barack Obama a “Magic Negro.”
(It reminds me of the man who was offended by the word niggardly and the man who was offended by the phrase black hole. I think somebody could write a song that said, “Don’t call people N—-r, because it’s not a nice name,” and people would object to it as racist because it contained the N-word.)
It was a year-and-a-half before the election when Ehrenstein published the original column in the Los Angeles Times. Hillary Clinton was considered a shoo-in. I think that Al Sharpton might still have been in the running, and it is an imitation of his voice that is used in the song. Politically speaking, Barack Obama was his (and Jesse Jackson’s) worst nightmare. At that time it was acceptable for certain African Americans to question Obama’s blackness, but once he had locked up the nomination he became the icon that epitomized all the longings and hopes that African Americans had held for centuries. Odd, no?
I think that the reaction to the song reveals a lot of things that are mostly under the surface of our country’s psyche. For liberals, life is encapsulated in words and symbols. Because the song had the word “negro” in it, it was taken immediately as racist. Never mind that the word is still part of the name of the United Negro College Fund. Forget the fact that it was a black liberal who called Obama that. Although it was okay to question Obama’s blackness in 2007 (after all he was raised by an Indonesian stepfather and a white American mother), he eventually became the ultimate and perfect symbol of African American culture, much to the chagrin of Jesse Jackson. (I’m sure you remember that Jackson wanted to castrate Obama, and then he cried during his acceptance speech. Words and symbols, words and symbols).
In the meantime, conservatives were asking about each of the nominees, Clinton and Obama included: Is this person qualified? Are his stated positions good for our country? Does his or her voting record show consistency and good judgment? They were discounting race and sex as reasons for voting for a candidate. They were making fun of people who either portrayed Obama as “The Magic Negro” or as a black secular Messiah. Nobody–white, black, Asian, or Latino–should be portrayed in such absolute or burdensome terms.
So who are the real racists? In a column on this same topic, Larry Elder points out that the Democratic Party was the party of anti-black bigots while the Republican Party was supporting civil rights and desegregation. He points out that the Republican Party platform would help black people, especially school choice and privatized retirement funds.
I would also like to point out that African Americans mostly oppose abortion and same-sex marriage, yet the Democratic Party is strongly in favor of those things. Although they want law enforcement done in a just manner, they want their neighborhoods freed of drugs and violence.
Why then do African Americans remain loyal to the Democratic Party? Despite all evidence to the contrary, I think many of them are convinced that Republicans are mostly white bigots. As Larry Elder points out, they have been fed that line over and over. It’s no wonder that many people would believe it. I agree with Elder that Republicans need to be more proactive in showing how their platform is more in line with their core values and more beneficial to them in the long run.
So who are the real racists? Is it the black man who called Barack Obama a “Magic Negro” and said that white people would vote for him only out of guilt and only because he was perceived as “safe”? Or is it the white people who can boldly ridicule that nonsense because they truly judge people on their merits and not on their skin color?
3 responses so far ↓
American Elephant // January 1, 2009 at 6:06 am |
Republican opposition to Obama’s agenda will be defined as racist. I think the whole kerfuffle about this issue is to prime that pump.
Jesurgislac // January 1, 2009 at 7:32 am |
In a column on this same topic, Larry Elder points out that the Democratic Party was the party of anti-black bigots while the Republican Party was supporting civil rights and desegregation.
This is the kind of claim that makes me genuinely wonder; are these people really so completely ignorant of their country’s recent political history, or are they deliberately distorting the truth for their partisan political purposes?
RG’s Reply: Were you referring to the liberals? They are cetainly distorting the truth. Persuading poor black people that the answer to their problems is being stuck in bad public schools and bad housing projects is horrible. Then saying that they “care” about them is unconscionable.
The Republicans distributing “Barack the Magic Negro” doesn’t worry me; the faster they become the party on the fringe, appealling only to white racists and homophobes, the better. Perhaps Sarah Palin could be convinced to run for President in 2012?
Sarcasm and snark aside, though, do you see, RG, that it’s not especially important whether loyal white Republicans like yourself can be convinced that the distribution of this CD is a not a racist attack on President-Elect Obama?
RG’s Reply: Actually, I’m considering switching to the Libertarian Party.
It’s a point of fact that the song is a parody of an article by a liberal black man.
Your opposition to Obama, and support for the next Republican to run for President, is pretty much a shoo-in, and you are not part of the group who will be offended by racist attacks on a black man who will be inaugurated President of the US this month.
RG’s Reply: I wish that you would figure out that I am a more nuanced person than your caricature of me. For several months I was planning NOT to vote for John McCain. When he chose Sarah Palin, I decided to be back on his side. When he supported the economic bailout, I almost jumped ship again. It is likely that I will formally sever my ties with and support for the Republican Party in the next few months.
I was highly offended that a black man wrote a racist attack on Obama. That’s what the song is about–the racist attack by a black man on somebody that he did not consider a true black man. I support the point that the song is making–that real racism is more on the liberal side than the conservative side.
How do you think a black voter who might think about changing their vote because they’re ardently anti-choice or fervently anti-marriage, would feel about Republican distribution of a song that refers to the first black President as a “Magic Negro”?
RG’s Reply: How do/did they feel about a black liberal man calling Obama that? At the time, many prominent African Americans agreed that Obama was not really an African American–not really black, or at least not black enough. Then suddenly he was about to beat Hillary Clinton, and he became Mr. Black America himself. Don’t you find that odd? Don’t you find it irrational? Isn’t it worth making fun of?
Unfortunately few people, black or white, care to think hard enough to realize that they should hold the original author of the newspaper article accountable for what he wrote.
Jesurgislac // January 2, 2009 at 6:45 am |
RG, I obviously wasn’t making myself very clear – probably because I started out with snark about Larry’s historical distortion and your uncritical acceptance of it. Snark is never helpful in communication, and I should have resisted it.
The point I was trying to make in the second part of your comment is this, because I do genuinely think it’s an important issue.
Black people in the US overwhelmingly tend to vote Democratic, and you want to know why; that was the question you seemed to be asking that I tried to answer.
Hopefully I can make myself more clear.
If you, as a white Republican or Libertarian, want to know why black voters reject the Republican party, you need to consider not “How can I justify Republican party history and Republican policies as a white right-winger” but “How does the Republican party appear to black voters?” – and “How do Republican policies appear to black voters?”
You say “Persuading poor black people that the answer to their problems is being stuck in bad public schools and bad housing projects is horrible.
Persuading yourself that white liberals say or think things like this will never help you figure out why black people tend to vote Democratic. Republican policies, after all, tend not to run towards raising income tax on the wealthier citizens in order to pay for improving public schools, paying higher wages to teachers in public schools in order to attract the best quality graduates to a teaching career, and build more public housing of good quality for poorer citizens and immigrants. If they did, you’d have a point.
Now granted, the Democratic party is not a political party I’d support; it’s a right-wing party with moderate right-wing policies. I’d be much more likely to vote Green. But given a choice only between a radically right-wing party to which the racist Democrats defected in the 1960s after the Civil Rights Act, and the Democratic Party, I can see why black people in the US tend to vote Democratic.
Then suddenly he was about to beat Hillary Clinton, and he became Mr. Black America himself. Don’t you find that odd? Don’t you find it irrational? Isn’t it worth making fun of?
No.
Plenty of people thought, and said, openly, that they didn’t think a black man stood a chance running for President, because too many white voters might say they were going to vote Democratic, but when it came down to the voting booth, would find themselves unable to vote for a black man.
Consider the history of the treatment of black people in the US. In 2000, Jeb Bush had black voters systematically removed from the voters’ register in Florida. There are kids who are old enough to vote this year who may have living parents – or grandparents – old enough to remember when there wasn’t a year went by in the US without a lynching, white men ganging up to kill a black man in the certainty they would never be punished for it. There was one very elderly voter who got into the news because she was the daughter of parents born in slavery.
That you find it “odd, irrational and worth making fun of” that so many black people – and so many white people who regret strongly the history of racism in the US – found it deeply moving that a black man was now to become President of the US – doesn’t speak strongly to me that you’re particularly interested in seeking the causes of why black voters would see the Republican party as the racist party.
Black people are not only dealing with the crippling legacy of slavery still, but with decades of active discrimination against them by the government at county, state, and federal level. A black man in the US is much more likely to be sentenced to jail than a white man: a black person who kills a white person is much more likely to be sentenced to death than a white person who kills a black person. A black child born in the US is much more likely to be born poor, badly educated thanks to underfunded public schools, badly housed thanks to underfunded public housing, denied basic health care thanks to the worst health care system in the developed world (the American boy who died in 2007 because his mother couldn’t afford to take him to the dentist? guess what color he was?), and to face active discrimination in the workplace and on the street in adulthood.
I don’t doubt that your immediate reaction to the paragraph above will be to deny or attack some or all of the statements made in it.
My point is that you cannot make these things go away for black people by telling them they’re not there, or that they’re the fault of white liberals.
The Democratic party does not handle poverty and race issues particularly well – I’d agree. But the Republican party handles them worse.