Origin of the Term "Magic Negro"

In case you wondered about the term "Magic Negro" that Rush Limbaugh is catching a lot of grief about, it didn't start with the Paul Shanklin parody song Rush played on his radio show, but with David Ehrenstein's LA Times March 19 piece "Obama the 'Magic Negro'."

Here's how Ehrenstein defines "Magic Negro":

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro .

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.

Read the whole LA Times piece here.

Mychal Massie also has a column on the subject here.