Magical Negro - Television Tropes & Idioms

Starring Morgan Freeman as the Genie!

The film opens with yet another voiceover narration by Morgan Freeman, extolling the saintly virtues of a white person who deserves our reverence.

—Roger Ebert reviewing The Bucket List.

"The fact that people are poor or discriminated against doesn't necessarily endow them with any special qualities of justice, nobility, charity or compassion."

Saul Alinsky

In order to show the world that minority characters are not bad people, one will step forward to help a "normal" person, with their pure heart and Closer To Earth wisdom. They are from a minority that is discriminated against, physically or mentally disabled, or social outcasts (drifters, the homeless, ex-cons). They step (often clad in a clean, white suit) into the life of the central character (often white, American and racist) and, in some way, enrich the central character's life.

While this can work as a plea for tolerance, or simply An Aesop about not dismissing people just because they're different, it's all too easy to go too far and make them into an all-knowing Mary Sue or pseudo-narrator whose magical minority-powers save the day. It also tends to raise the question that if the Magical Negro (more commonly called the Magic Negro, and sometimes the Mystical Negro) is so powerful and intelligent, why he's never saving the day, himself, instead of helping the mainstream hero to get all the glory. Also, quite often he's just ditched off or even killed after he's fulfilled his purpose for the plot.

To sum up. A magical negro is a skilled or wise minority member who aids the protagonist and possibly dies. So for instance Jesus would be an early (~~non-black~~ minority) example.

If the Magical Negro is from a society of Noble Savages, expect an Anvilicious Aesop about the failings of the society which protagonist comes from - which usually leads to the protagonist 'going native' and ending up better at everything than his Magical Negro mentor.

The reason the Magical Negro is problematic is because it is a moral and artistic shortcut, replacing a genuine moral message with a well-intentioned but patronizing homage to the special gifts of the meek.

Morgan Freeman is the ultimate Magical Negro actor. Referenced on The Daily Show when discussing Barack Obama's need to pick a running mate who won't just turn him into one.

See also Whoopi Epiphany Speech and Black Best Friend. For a similar trope about women, see Manic Pixie Dream Girl, for the gay version see Magical Queer. The disabled version of this is Inspirationally Disadvantaged or Disability Superpower. When this is not specific to race or gender the character is a Sidekick Ex Machina. Similar in vein to the Magical Native American, though that trope tends to be more explicitly magical.

NOTE ON WRITING EXAMPLES FOR THIS PAGE: Do not add an entry simply because there is a mentor or magical character who belongs to a minority. Do not assume every such character is the result of Positive Discrimination. Good entries for this trope either embody a Discredited Trope or seem adequately justified by the context of the story.

Note that even The Other Wiki has an entry

about the Magical Negro.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

Film

From Iron Man: First Yinsen (who is actually an Afghan, but close enough) saves Tony Stark's life by performing heart surgery on him and hooking him up to a car battery. Then he dispenses home-spun wisdom about the importance of family and the need for Tony to re-think what his legacy should be. In the end, he sacrifices his life to save Tony, and with his dying breath he urges him not to waste his life. So touching! They justify it by having Yinsen imply with his last breaths that he's planned to die during the escape from the start, so he can be with his family in the afterlife.
Dogma: Rufus is somewhat of a parody. And according to Rufus, Jesus is the Ur-Magical Negro.
- Taking in consideration the Brazilian movie O Auto da Compadecida, it could be taken literally.
Radio, the 2003 film
The Legend Of Bagger Vance: Bagger Vance; notably, the film is very loosely based on the Bhagahvad-Gita, with Vance in the role of Krishna, so it's implied that Bagger Vance is actually God.
- Admittedly, this is a fairly appropriate translation of the original story. The easiest way to get Western audiences to understand the extreme social distance between the prince Arjuna and his charioteer is to portray "R. Junnah" as white and "Bagger Vance" as black in the Jim Crow South.
  - Wait—does that mean Krishna's a Magical Negro ?
  - While Krishna's skin was supposedly extra-dark, that's only racial from a modern point of view - the blue or dark skin he's often depicted with is just to emphasize the point that he's a Physical God.
  - Well, yes, but there are several examples on the page of "Magical Hispanics" and such. Perhaps I should have said "Magical Low-Caste Charioteer".
  - The word Krsna, another spelling of Krishna, means dark blue or black and Krishna is often depicted as Onyx black
  - In ancient India, the Brahmins were descended from light-skinned Indo-European Vedics while the dark-skinned peoples were descended from native Dravidians who were already civilized, but oppressed by the warlike Indo-Europeans...So Yeah.
In the second Pirates Of The Caribbean film, there were accusations of the black voodoo lady Tia Dalma being a Magical Negro. Given Disney's tendency towards Unfortunate Implications this isn't really surprising. However, the third film revealed Tia Dalma to actually be the sea goddess Calypso who is searching for a way to be freed from her mortal body. Which really is quite similar, but also works in that she's not necessarily on anyone's side but her own.
The Defiant Ones: Sydney
The Family Man: Cash
Bulworth: The homeless man played by Amiri Baraka, who tells Bulworth "You've got to be a spirit, not a ghost," and then shows up again at the end of the film as what could be interpreted as an angelic presence, after Bulworth has been shot and killed to repeat his advice.
The Matrix: Morpheus and the Oracle. Becomes a bit less blatant when you take into account that the first choice to play Neo was Will Smith. But the Oracle apparently prefers this trope (The Other Darrin narrowly averted).
O Brother Where Art Thou? kicked off with a Magical Negro version of Teiresias from Homer's Odyssey. A bit of a parody.
Inverted in Finding Forrester, when Sean Connery plays a mysterious white man with incredible writing ability that helps a clueless inner city youth (black) become a famous writer and the man now, dog.
- Bedazzled is yet another movie featuring God as a Magical Negro.
  - Word of God is he is an angel, not God. And given how briefly he appears, probably isn't an example of this trope. Remember not every magical minority falls under this trope. The angel doesn't act to save Elliot because that's something Elliot has to do for himself.
A historical/film example which seems to play with or subvert the trope is the movie Something the Lord Made. It tells the story of a white surgeon (Alan Rickman) aided in his cardiac research by a black assistant (Mos Def) who is clearly the greater genius of the two. However, against type, the black assistant is not shown as being happy having another take credit for his work, but realizes this is the only way for him to do what he is interested in rather than being a janitor. There is also an implication that despite his goodness and supposed liberalism, the white doctor was essentially a plagiarist taking advantage of the racist system. Based on the true story of Vivien Thomas and Alfred Blalock, whose relationship the Wikipedia summarises as "complicated and contradictory".
Uncle Remus from Song Of The South epitomizes this trope, to no discredit to the story itself.
Waiting... had Bishop, a ridiculously blatant execution of this trope. Seriously, he existed only to give complex advice to everyone's social and psychological problems, and did so with a calm, deep-voiced, wise demeanor.
Morgan Freeman uses this persona for his role in Wanted. Actually a subversion, since he's manipulating the Fraternity for profit, and all his talk about "destiny" and "duty" turns out to be a smokescrean.
- And again in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in which he plays the wise Moor Azeem, apparently gifted with the ability to solve any problem which calls for brains over brawn. Historically speaking, the time of Richard I was at least half a century after the Muslim world began to backslide into fundamentalism from its scientific golden age, but it's possible Azeem left his homeland because of fundamentalism believing such things as math being a tool of the devil. In any case, while some people (such as the religious Friar Tuck) think he's a literal Magical Negro ("You are truly a wizard!"), he's actually just versed in science. (It's almost like some '80s and '90s movies with their Technological Asians.)
  - Azeem counts as at least a partial subversion. Azeem is an educated, scholarly man living with ignorant hicks from The Dung Ages.
  - Let's not forget Bruce Almighty where Morgan is God.
  - Also Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy, to a certain extent. Although he displays no obvious powers beyond the Power Of Friendship.
  - Basically just... Morgan Freeman.
Djimon Hounsou also seems to be playing this sort of role A LOT since his role as Maximus' friend in Gladiator.
Lamont in American History X.
Moses the clock worker in The Hudsucker Proxy. He provides sagely narration in a stereotypical patois, is satisfied coaxing the protagonist to success, and apparently has the power to stop time by obstructing the gears of the Hudsucker Building's clock.
Not Another Teen Movie has a parody of a Magical Negro in the "Wise Janitor"...played by Mr. T.
How about the Bogo-Matassalai from Arthur and the Invisibles?
In M Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable: Elijah Price (Samuel L Jackson), the black and physically-handicapped mentor to Bruce Willis' is one of these. Until the ending when it's brutally subverted. He is revealed to be an Evil Genius who has been murdering and destroying in the hope of finding a "True Superhero," and any help he gives Bruce is purely manipulative. All he wanted to do is find his opposite, because it meant there was a reason for someone like him to exist.
An entire army of black people turn up to liberate the white protagonist's girlfriend in 10000 BC. Granted, they were actually interested in liberating their own people from slavery, too, but at the end, the leader of these guys almost sacrifices his entire people to slavery, including his son, in order to let the white guy get his girl back.
Subverted, somewhat with Whoopi Goldberg's character in Ghost. She starts out as a fraud, and when she discovers her supposed psychic powers are real, she panics and refuses to help the main character. She only agrees to help after the main character annoys her beyond human endurance.
Possibly reversed in Gran Torino, where a cranky, foul-mouthed, casually racist old white guy helps a young Hmong boy find his way in America and makes a Heroic Sacrifice for him.
Will Smith seems to often play roles where he is not literally magical but otherwise fulfills the role of Magic Negro, seeming to exist to help out non-minority characters, such as in Hitch, where he plays the smooth date doctor to bumbling white guys although he realizes he needs a little help himself, when using his own smooth moves backfires.

Close Film

Literature

Stephen King seems to have issues on this subject; many of his writings and their film adaptations include examples of this trope. To be fair to King, he does acknowledge his tendency to write characters such as Dick Hallorann and Mother Abigail as superblack heroes and says they are products of his white liberal guilt:
- The Green Mile: John Coffey, the gentle black man who calmly dies so as not to cause a fuss while using his powers to help those who guarded his cell. There is a Christ-metaphor at work there, however...
- The Shining: Dick Hallorann, elderly black man with psychic powers.
- The Stand: Mother Abagail, elderly and black; Nick Andros, deaf-mute; Tom Cullen, mentally disabled.
  - Abagail is arguably an aversion, since she's pretty much the single most powerful person in Boulder.
  - Also averted in that we spend quite a lot of time inside Mother Abigail's head, and her self-doubt complicates the situation for the heroes in the second act. But other than that, yeah.
- Dreamcatcher: Dudditz, saintly brain-damaged kid.
- Magic, mentally disabled guys are arguably a literal trope in themselves with Stephen King. They seem to have special immunity to dark magic and what-not.
- The Talisman (and to a lesser extent the sequel Black House): Young, white hero Jack Sawyer is guided along his way by aging blues-man Lester "Speedy" Parker and his Territories twinner, Parkus.
- Also Wolf the somewhat slow werewolf in "The Talisman"
- The Dark Tower: Sheemie Ruiz, the slightly retarded psychic and teleporter.
- But he manages to mostly avoid doing it in It, with Mike Hanlon, who, while sage-like, is a very active participant in the big battles and doesn't even die!
In Boy's Life by Robert Mc Cammon, Moon Man and The Lady are typical Magical Negroes.
Uncle Tom, from Uncle Toms Cabin, who refused to escape from being sold to protect two other slaves (Eliza and her son Harry) who did escape — and served as a moral inspiration to his first new masters, the St. Clare family, before his final martyrdom at the hands of Simon Legree. And even then, he managed to convert Kimo and Sambo, the ones who actually beat him to death per Legree's orders. (This reflects, perhaps unintentionally, some early Christian martyr stories, where those doing the killing subsequently convert precisely because of it.) The trope is more evident in the stage adaptations of the original book, which suffered severe Adaptation Decay; the original Tom was intended as more of a Christ figure.
The Biblical tale of the Good Samaritan, Samaritans being a perennial subject of racism in the holy land around that time, a detail which is really important to the message of the story but often forgotten. You know what that means.
Brom's The Plucker, despite being beautifully written and illustrated, unfortunately casts the character Mabelle as a blatant Magical Negro: she uses forbidden magic to help the white family, then dies unpleasantly and returns as a ghost to tell the little boy how to dispose of the Big Bad's remains.
The title character in Bernard Malamud's short story The Angel Levine is an early (and very blatant) example.
The Cay features an old black man who rescues a racist white boy who had become blinded when their ship sinks. The two live together in a tropical island and the black man lives long enough to make the boy a better person before dying in a hurricane. The book won a number of awards before suffering a backlash due to accusations of racism. Nonetheless it remains a classic children's/young adult book.
Jim from Huckleberry Finn is a nice subversion. While he is Black, and into magic, it doesn't Flanderize him and certainly isn't portrayed typically. Bonus points for averting *Hollywood Voodoo.
You may not consider Batman literature, but there's no comics section here so this'll have to do. In the recent story "Batman R.I.P.", Bruce Wayne is found lost on the street with no memory of who he is, when he comes across a black homeless man named Honor Jackson. Honor helps Bruce start his path to recovery, but then disappears and is revealed to have already been dead. Honor's a bit of a subversion of this trope though, looking for his own personal redemption and saying that he'd never done anything he could be proud of, but was now happy to save one man's life.

Close Literature

Live Action TV

Life On Mars: Nelson
Parodied in a series of The Man Show sketches. A hapless white guy is presented with an opportunity to cheat on his wife, and as he agonizes over the decision, a self-identified Magical Negro appears to him, sings a song about "Listening to your penis's heart," and helps him find a way to rationalize the infidelity.
The premise of New Amsterdam is that a Mighty Whitey saves the life of a Magical Native American and in return they use their magic to make him immortal. Naturally, it never occurs to them to make the members of their own tribe immortal, perhaps because the immortal magic only works on superior white genes. However, they only made him immortal until he found his true happiness (Blessed With Suck?), at which point he'd become mortal again. Since they're not around anymore, the implication is that they were already quite happy the way they were, making it less Magical Negro and more Noble Savage (recovering Magical Native American).
- A bizarre twist and possible subversion — the protagonist's mentor who gives him sagely advice and a beer whenever he needs to unwind and talk about his troubles, while a very stereotypically grizzled and kindly old black man, is also... the protagonist's son. Such are the vagaries of being an unaging immortal (the kind who can have kids but can't pass on the immortality).
Rose on Lost consistently dispenses sensible, down-to-earth wisdom. She leads Charlie in prayer after his Disney Death. She mystically "knows" her husband is alive elsewhere on the island. In general, if she believes a character is good, she's correct.
- However, Rose later grew a bit, becoming a character in her own right in season 2 with a backstory and her own sideplot. And by season 4, she's actively snarking at Jack. And then she decides to just give up and just live in "retirement" with Bernard.
- On the other hand, it's completely subverted by Eko. While he seems to be a Magical Negro priest who tries to restore Locke's "faith", he's actually not a real priest, but a former brutal drug lord in disguise. Oh, and he's so idiotic he tries to use dynamite to blow open a blast door...
- Mysterious knowledge and odd-but-helpful advice is pretty common among everyone on 'Lost'.
- Locke initially seems to fit the role of a strange white Magical Negro, possessing mystical, almost shamanistic knowledge and a deep, unexplained communion with the island, always ready to dispense nice bits of pop-wisdom and jungle smarts... that is, until later in the series when he goes from subservient shaman spirit-guide to full-blown Messiah. And then crazy person/gullible dupe, responsible for much ill-advised Stuff Blowing Up.
Inverted in the 1980s Twilight Zone episode "Paladin of the Lost Hour", which had a magical white man (who does double duty as The Obi Wan) help the young black protagonist find his destiny.
- In the short story upon which the episode is based, author Harlan Ellison states, "One of these men was black, the other white" and refuses to say which one is which. Of course, for a visual medium, they had to make a choice, and it seems that they deliberately chose to avoid the Magical Negro trope.
Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation, played by Whoopi Goldberg, is an El-Aurian, a member of a race with an almost supernatural sense of time and space. She offers sage advice as the bartender of Ten Forward, can tell when history has been altered, and is the only person on the ship that scares Q. Kind of makes you wonder how she passed the security check to be a bartender on a starship.
- It helps that she's Captain Picard's Black Best Friend, but she's happy to give a Whoopi Epiphany Speech to anyone who asks—or anyone else who she thinks needs one.
- Of course, she did advocate for Hugh to be used to wipe out the Borg, and she can outshoot Worf on the phaser range, and break up a bar fight with a "little souvenir she picked up on Mabus III"... so she's not all chicken soup for the soul, either.
- ...The fact that she can do all these things and yet, by choice, retains the lowly supporting-character status of bartender — preferring to let the mostly-white main cast go out there and have the actual adventures and such while she stays home and dispenses wisdom — is why she's a grade-A example of this trope.
American Gothic. Although Mrs. Holt is certainly mysterious, wise, and spiritual enough to be a Magical Negro. The extent of her 'magic spell' to help sway the judge in Caleb's custody hearing is...a nice big bowl of homemade chicken soup. Aside from some hints at African tribalism in her ancestry, a bit of voodoo, and some understanding of how the Afterlife works, she dispenses only common sense advice.
- In one episode her ineffectiveness in protecting Caleb from evil is lampshaded when Buck, after being thwarted by her interference, apparently makes her verge on choking to death—presumably he does not kill her because she's that small a blip on his radar (or such a petty thing would be beneath him). And the advice she gives Caleb regarding Merlyn's spirit being laid to rest is quite sound, namely "don't mess with the dead." Too bad Caleb doesn't listen, and in trying to help her move on instead brings her back...with unfortunate results.
- By the end of the show, though, she has indeed been ditched from the plot, and without even really serving a real purpose other than to give Caleb her halfway house to stay in. We can only speculate whether her role was cut due to Executive Meddling, or if it might have been expanded had the show not been Cut Short.
Elosha in Battlestar Galactica was a (Black) priestess whose whole purpose in existing as a character on the show, besides making dramatic prayer speech, was helping and guiding Roslin (White) to find her way as the prophesied Dying Leader who will find their way to Earth. Then Elosha got killed on Kobol. In Season 4 she reappears, more magical than ever, as a vision to Roslin telling her she needs to reconnect with people, starting by declaring her love to Adama.
- To be fair, originally Billy Keikeya was meant to be in the visions but the actor couldn't make it.
Examples from Degrassi High:
- Maya is a wheelchair-bound girl who is always the voice of reason in her circle of friends, and (unlike every single one of those friends) never gets a spotlight episode. Oddly, she did not have Positive Discrimination in Degrassi Junior High, where her main appearance involved getting conned into buying phony drugs from the resident Parker Lewis Ferris Bueller.
- Strangest of all is Patrick, who is a Magical Irishman. He befriends Liz and Spike (the two grimmest girls in the show). Then he teaches them to live and enjoy life again, to a degree where he's like a mild male version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The effect — a boy dressed like a stock Irish laborer from old movies, singing Celtic love songs (which he writes and composes) in a thick brogue — is hard to describe. We never see him do anything that doesn't involve helping these girls, and he eventually vanishes without a trace.
Larry Wilmore, "Senior Black Correspondent" on The Daily Show, explicitly referenced the trope one episode. A disbelieving Jon Stewart repeated, "Magical...?" "Negro. It's okay, you can say it." "Magical...I'm sorry, I'm a little uncomfortable—" "Good. That was a test."
- A subsequent incident involving "imaginary black crime" featured the other party pointing out that the "imaginary black people who help whites", such as most Morgan Freeman characters, "aren't imaginary, they're magical!"
Usutu in Volume 3 of Heroes bears deep, deep elements of this. His sole purpose seems to be to send Parkman (and later, Hiro) on spiritual visions of the future and the past, and then die.
- And apparently the poor guy can't even rest in peace, because Volume 4 has him appearing to Parkman in visions, explaining that Matt is destined to become a prophet to the world.
- Charles Deveaux is pretty bad, too. In the season one finale, he appears in Peter Petrelli's dreams to tell him about the power of love, and about Peter's very special destiny to save the world. This is despite the fact that Peter had recently instigated a fight that ended with Charles' daughter Simone getting shot and killed. So if Charles is teaching Peter anything in his dreams, it really ought to be about the power of an incredibly pissed off father breaking a foot off in his superpowered ass, but of course this is completely ignored in order to further Peter's character.
  - Arguably, Peter hallucinated the entire conversation, in which Moral Dissonance would apply.
The title character in Benson, a wise black servant employed in the household of a wealthy governor's family, who solves all their problems. And is secretly the governor's most trusted political advisor.
- Eventually subverted by having Benson seek his own political office, running against his former mentor plus a dark horse in a close political race. The show was deliberately ended in a Cliff Hanger, though Word Of God states that, yes, Benson did win that office.
The Doctor Who 2009 Easter special features a black lady who among the bus passengers - including the Doctor - is the only one who is able to hear the voices. She displays telepathic abilities throughout the episode, which manifests itself in her staring off into the distance and whispering vaguely ominous stuff.
Repeated occurances in semi-mystical TV shows such as Supernatural, where psychics and clairvoyants are all seemingly minority and almost all other characters are white

Close Live Action TV

Theater

Web Original

Western Animation

This is one trope that The Simpsons did not subvert for the first time, though they did have fun with it. Lisa Simpson had her own personal Magical Negro in the form of Bleedin' Gums Murphy, who noted that she should should listen when people tell her to brush her teeth and that she sang the blues pretty good for someone with no actual problems.
- Bleeding Gums Murphy really was closer to a Mentor though.
- They finally did outright subvert this in the episode "Brawl in the Family", with the character Gabriel, an apparent Magical Negro (who Homer thinks is an angel) and social worker assigned to help the family with their dysfunction. He's also voiced by Delroy Lindo. Homer expressly compares him to the aforementioned Bagger Vance example. Gabriel, confronted by Homer's long lost Vegas wife, gives up on the family, telling Homer, "Your seed should be wiped from the Earth!"
The Wrong Coast had one movie parody with the title Magical Black Men. Starring Morgan Freeman, Will Smith, Don Cheadle and Lawrence Fishburne teaming up to solve the problems of white men in a moral crisis.
Subverted and parodied by Toots in Clone High. Toots is a blind jazz clarinetist who tries to give sagely advice, and really, really fails.
Subverted by Chef of South Park', whose advice usually amounts to him singing passionate soul songs about sex. That, or imparting information an 8-year-old really shouldn't know.
Stan: "Chef, how can I get a girl to like me?"
Chef: "Oh, that's easy! You just have to find the clitoris."
- And on one occasion where Chef could have given Stan useful information, he didn't.
  Chef: "Hello there, children!"
  Stan: "Chef, Chef! What would a priest wanna stick up my butt?"
  Chef: "...G'bye!"
- And let's not forget his failure to define "lesbian" for the hapless kids...
The crows in Dumbo, a Talking Animal version of this trope.
Inverted in Yvon of the Yukon; the title character, a ludicrously uncouth, unkempt, vulgar and crusty Frenchman becomes a "sagely" mentor to the thoroughly ordinary teenager Tommy, who happens to be Inuit.