• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

White People Think Black People Are Magical

ksen

ksen

Contributor
Joined
Jun 10, 2005
Messages
6,540
Location
Florida
Basic Beliefs
Calvinist
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/11/white-people-think-black-people-are-magical.html

Social scientists have known for a while that racism isn't just about explicit hatred and animosity. Often, prejudice is the result of split-second, gut-level decision-making rather than the acts of bad people with malicious intentions. A recent study in Social Psychological and Personality Science casts an interesting new light on this: White people apparently have a "superhumanization bias" when it comes to black people — that is, they associate them with superhuman abilities.
Click to expand...

I blame the movie Hancock for this.
 
ksen said:
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/11/white-people-think-black-people-are-magical.html

Social scientists have known for a while that racism isn't just about explicit hatred and animosity. Often, prejudice is the result of split-second, gut-level decision-making rather than the acts of bad people with malicious intentions. A recent study in Social Psychological and Personality Science casts an interesting new light on this: White people apparently have a "superhumanization bias" when it comes to black people — that is, they associate them with superhuman abilities.
Click to expand...

I blame the movie Hancock for this.
Click to expand...
I blame Julius Erving and Michael Jordan.
 
This doesn't happen with white historical figures? Albert Einstein, for example?
 
ksen said:
I blame the movie Hancock for this.
Click to expand...
Pffft.
Every other movie set in Africa had a black witchdoctor for a while.
Every series that has a New Orleans episode has a black Voodoo priest or priestess.
My wife can read my mind like a book...
 
Mammy: The Original Magic Negro

Melissa Harris-Perry said:
Part of the reason that they remain so pervasive is because we reproduce them in popular culture pretty often. There exists a catalogue of negative ways that African American women have been characterized. At one point I talk about the Mammy figure in the “Sex in the City” series and in the first Sex in the City film. If I were to say there are Mammies in Sex in the City people might ask me what I was talking about. There are no black housekeepers, but what we do see are these black women who are actually inconsequential characters and who we typically never see again. They pop up in white women’s lives with these magical abilities. They come in, and despite having resources or being younger, are able to fix all of the problems that the white women are having.
At its core, that’s actually what the Mammy image is. It’s the idea that an African American woman might have skills, talents, and capacities, but they’re never put to use for herself. They’re never used to follow her own dreams or to nurture her own family or community. Instead, these skills, talents, and capabilities are always put to use assisting white women or white families. We see this pretty regularly deployed in contemporary media.
Click to expand...
- See more at: http://madamenoire.com/73961/ain’t-...ood-in-“sister-citizen”/#sthash.tfFb9U7n.dpuf
 
What?
You're not magical, Athena? How do you get the patience to keep posting on these boards if you're not?

(and stop trying to make me dislike Zoe with the "she only uses her talents to assist the white hero" line please)
((yes, I'm on a Firefly rerun, blame my kids))

(((like they would have had the idea without me showing them the pilot)))

 
Last edited:
You know though, I can see where this meme evolves from in American culture. As I was laughing at "magical Negro" article I started to think about my growing up in a primarily white working class neighborhood where the only African Americans were professional athletes. (We only had 'boat people" immigrants in those days and the language barrier was too great for us to mix as kids.) Having left the neighborhood and gone out into the city I encountered more African Americans of all socioeconomic statuses. Collectively (and individually) my encounters with African Americans was my first chance at really being able to interact with people who had a different perspective than I did. In other words, at an influential age I gained wisdom and insight by being in contact with African Americans. I don't think my experiences are that uncommon. This might be why the meme is so powerful and so "white American".

Thoughts?
 
I kind of agree with your analysis, and I'd also see it as part of the "I have black friends" defense.
(or, in my country, "I have arab friends")

When you're dumped in a housing project with a high crime rate and a lot of immigrants, they're those sneaky blacks and arabs who are stealing our freedom and security.

When you get out of the project and into a nice calm neighbourhood, the couple of immigrants around are the exotic friends who are so interesting because they can have you taste new food, talk about different traditions, that, even if they weren't special friends, you will remember longer than your other smalltime friends because they were so exotic.
And it's them you keep in mind when you don't want to be racist, while still despising the housing project ones.
 
50_cartoon_pf.gif

http://www.blackcommentator.com/49/49_magic.html

The mystic icon that first comes to mind with many of today's moviegoers and film aficionados is Michael Clarke Duncan in "The Green Mile." Duncan received an Oscar nomination for the role of gentle giant John Coffey, a healer wrongly convicted of murdering two children. In the movie, Coffey cures the jaded prison guard of corrosive cynicism and a kidney infection. He also saves the lives of the warden's wife and the prison mouse.

Ariel Dorfman sees sinister forces, something disturbing in such portrayals. "The magic Negro is an easy way of making the characters and the audiences happy. And I am for happiness, but the real joy of art is to reveal certain intractable ways in which humans interact. This phenomenon may be a way of avoiding confrontation," says Dorfman, a playwright, poet and cultural critic.

"The black character helps the white character, which demonstrates that [the former] feels this incredible interest in maintaining the existing society. Since there is no cultural interchange, the character is put there to give the illusion that there is cultural crossover to satisfy that need without actually addressing the issue," Dorfman says. "As a Chilean, however, I sense that maybe deep inside, mainstream Americans somehow expect those who come from the margins will save them emotionally and intellectually."
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Yet, we don't have that powerful a meme here. At most a couple of arab sidekicks in some movies.
Maybe because a lot of our TV is from the US?
 
And here we see a bunch of people just saying whatever pops into their heads that happens to be generally related to the phrase "white people think black people are magical". Free association as discussion.
 
  • Like
Reactions: One
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom