The National Review flashes back to a moment before September 11, 2001 when the nation took Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson more seriously.
The Loyal Negro has been both a figure of racist sentiment and a bridge across the racial divide: Old Black Joe, or the sidekick. The Erotic Negro has held the stage for a long time. Blacks “are more ardent after their female,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. Whites who came up to Harlem in the Thirties “were just mad for . . . what you might call Negro soul,” wrote Malcolm X. The Thuggish Negro is alternately feared (Willie Horton) and admired (Puffy Combs, a.k.a. P. Diddy). “[I]n the worst of . . . rape, razor-slash, bottle-break, what-have-you, the Negro discovered and elaborated a morality of the bottom,” as Norman Mailer put it. Most compelling, perhaps, is the Performer, artistic or athletic, from Scott Joplin to James Baldwin to Michael Jordan.
With what degree of accuracy do these stereotypical characters reflect reality? More than zero, less than 100 percent. But accuracy is not the point: The function of these characters is to minister to our needs. All the many Negroes are invoked by both whites and blacks; depending on how they are played, or who the immediate audience is, these characters can flip from laudatory to hateful, or self-hating.
Yes but is he magic?
Stick this conversation under the category of the semi-transparency of black thought. The dirty laundry has been out there since the invention of Black Studies. What? Did you think nobody else was reading?
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