Please help me understand the Magical Negro trope

Im not familiar with most examples on the page. The ones i know well are Bruce Almighty, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and The Prucker.

And well...it seems like the trope only needs thee criteria.

A: Character is black B: Character is helpful secondary to protagonist C: Character is mystical or at least mysterious

I fail to see how that makes this a racist trope, which everything on the page suggests.

Imagine if the races where swapped in Bruce Almighty, if Micheal Caine was God and Will Smith was the ignorant jerk. People would still complain "Oh, WHITE MAN is God eh? And back people are jerks!". The issue here seems to be with the story, and the races are just an arbitrary thing to latch onto, as long as God is one race and Jerk is another (from a studio perspective, only using white answers is the best solution then). If you make the sucky guy white and its racist, then you flip it so the stucky guy is black and STILL it seems racist, maybe your just reading too much nonexistant subtext about race that isnt about at all.

I get even more confused with The Legend of Bagger Vance. Its a movie, and a book, and that book is based on an older book. A much much much older book. Ancient scripture old. It seems to me that using a black caddy in the south rather than a charioteer from a lower caste is a perfect way to modernize the social power gap. So whats the problem?

The Plucker is also a bit odd. Maybe the fact that she goes and dies is a bit racist (when allt he white people live) but a black person knowing african trible ritual makes more sense than a random white person knowing it, right?

Am i missing some key compontent here that makes these things truly racist as opposed to just being a black secondary charater with mystic abilities?

It's the whole 'hey! I exist only to teach this white guy a valuable life lesson!" thing. I can reccomend a long reading list if you're truly interested.

Well, you're oversimplifying the trope a bit.

Generally, the black person in question seemingly has nothing better to do with their life than use their mysterious ability (which at the very least seems magical) to help out the white people nearby. It doesn't matter if said black person is poor as dirt while the white person is more rich than Croesus - the black person's job is to basically neglect anything in their life to make the white person's life better.

The reason that this is racist is because it basically reduces black people to being merely accessories for white people. It also tends to create unrealistic expectations for black people in the real world - this trope is sometimes cited as part of the underlying cause of the "black people have to work twice as hard for the same amount of respect" issue.

And oddly enough, the black person is never at the center of the story. I mean, they have super great abilities, yet they oddly are just props in the white person's story.

I suppose. Im still a bit lost. Isnt it better than casting another white person for the support role? If that were the case their wouldnt be a black person represented anywhere. Also, a white supporting actor doesnt have people up in arms just because he is white.

Specificly im still failing to see how The Legend of Bagger Vance fits this trope, since the extreme social gap is KEY to the story, and Arjuna (R. Junah) is the main character. Not focusing the plot on Will Smith's Lord Krisha, regardless of his powers, makes sense. Krishna knows the ways of the universe, he is trying to explain them to the prince. Its the same reason most master-apprentice stories focus on the apprentice. He is the one learning and changing.

It seems...whiny...to say "Hes powerful and a minority so its SO RACIST if he isnt the main character."

edited 5th Apr '12 10:20:00 PM by Stormthorn

It's not just being a supporting actor, it's like the black character has little backstory and purpose beyond helping the white character.

Ok. Maybe i get it. Is it that if Mystic Guy was white (or just the same race as the hero) he would have more characterization and screentime than when they cast a black person for those sorts of roles?

Maybe, I'm not sure about that, although I'd guess the white/same race equivalent would be like The Obi-Wan or an Eccentric Mentor, which do tend to have more independent motivation/characterization.

It's a trope that is fine within individual works, but when viewed as a whole it is sort of an uncomfortable trend. It's a companion trope to Mighty Whitey.

Yea, if it was a good mix between main character minorities with their own stories and paper thin mentors, it wouldn't be so bad. History is important. Look! It's in a book!

The unfortunate parallel to both Magical Negro (and Magical Native American) and Mighty Whitey is that in both cases, the white person is the one who experiences growth, development, and improvement, while the non-white character is static, background, and whose existence is purely centered around being an avenue to improve the white person.