When conservatives say or do something racist
or racially insensitive, they hand liberals the political equivalent of
welfare — a benefit (in this case, greater support from minorities) for
which one doesn’t have to work.
That hurts everyone — the conservatives who scare off or turn off
voters whom they might otherwise win over; liberals who grow lazy and
complacent because they don’t have to make their case to minorities to
win their votes; and the minorities themselves who are written off by
one side and taken for granted by another.
It’s a dynamic that could play out again thanks to a little ditty
called “Barack the Magic Negro” — which found its way onto a CD which
found its way into the Christmas stockings of members of the Republican
National Committee, compliments of Chip Saltsman, a candidate for RNC
chairman. For Democrats, it could the gift that keeps on giving.
That’s because the lyrics — and the fact that Saltsman would be
thoughtless enough to distribute the song — make Republicans look bad,
and Democrats look good by comparison.
The song is a parody of “Puff the Magic Dragon” that pokes fun at
the verbal thrashing that President-elect Barack Obama got from old
school black leaders who — when he first arrived on the national scene
— didn’t respect him, trust him or think him viable.
The rap against Obama was that he wasn’t black enough and that, as
someone with a biracial background who was raised in Hawaii by white
grandparents, he was at a loss to understand the black experience in
America. And it only made Obama’s critics in the black community even
more suspicious that the young senator from Illinois had such magical
appeal to white Americans.
Mimicking the voice of the Rev. Al Sharpton, the song — which first
aired on Rush Limbaugh’s nationally syndicated radio show — begins like
this:
Barack the Magic Negro lives in D.C.
The L.A. Times, they called him that ‘Cause he’s not authentic like me.
Yeah, the guy from the L.A. paper Said he makes guilty whites feel good.
They’ll vote for him, and not for me ‘Cause he’s not from the hood.
The tune is certainly provocative and amusing. The problem is that,
for those who want to condemn it as racist — as many on the Left tried
to do — it’s hard to get there with a straight line.
After all, this controversy didn’t begin with Chip Saltsman and the
Republican National Committee. It didn’t even start with Paul Shanklin,
the comedian who recorded the CD. The whole concept of “Barack the
Magic Negro” originated on the Left, as a way for some to question
Obama’s racial authenticity and deride the eagerness with which some
white people used their support for Obama’s candidacy to demonstrate
how progressive they were and assuage feelings of guilt over a history
of racial discrimination.
This was all spelled out in detail by “the guy from the LA Paper” —
Los Angeles-based writer David Ehrenstein, himself an African-American.
In March 2007, just one month after Obama declared his candidacy for
president, Ehrenstein wrote an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times.
He wrote that, besides running for president, Obama was also “running
for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the
popular imagination — the ‘Magic Negro’ … while having to endure
criticism (white and black alike) concerning his alleged
‘inauthenticity.’” And like the dragon in the 1960s folk song, Obama is
— according to Ehrenstein — make believe. That’s the whole point. “The
less real he seems,” Ehrenstein writes, “the more desirable he becomes.”
So if the concept of “Barack the Magic Negro” is racist, then who
exactly is the racist? Chip Saltsman? Paul Shanklin? David Ehrenstein?
Or maybe those African-American powerbrokers, like Rev. Al Sharpton,
who questioned whether Obama was really black and applied a litmus test
to find out?
Maybe it’s all of the above, or none of the above.
Maybe what we should be worried about, instead, is how quickly those
on the Left jump at the chance to paint the opposing camp as hostile to
minorities — so they can score cheap political points, manipulate the
slighted, and continue to reap a benefit that is unearned.
Now that’s offensive.