How much do black ppl have to do 4 whites? Geez.....

Dr. Kings dream will come true when folks like Spike Lee and Barack Obama stop trying to convince us of our victimhood. They do NOT speak for all of us.

You are too young to have been involved in slavery, but if you've done any wrong to someone of any color, make restitution. Otherwise, the guilt is not yours to suffer. We don't need it.

Is very bad to steal Jobu's rum. Is very bad.

There are many people who are ignorant of their own histories. I have assumed nothing. I have theorized from your replies a perspective. If you feel slighted by our president perhaps you should look within. I wanted nothing from him nor his predecessor, neither did any colleagues and/or working professionals. If you had taken the time to read the book you would have found, not a book of victimization but one of empirical documented facts. You can have both. The knowledge that AA's have been victimized by a system of racism created in this country off the legacy and holocaust of slavery and in the same breath have "self-determined." To me, black people have never struggled with self-determination. They are probably the most resilient people on the planet. Finally, it was never a cheap shot. I am totally uneducated of Irish literature. That's a fact, I can acknowledge easily. However, hearing your weaknesses is never easy. You wish your well on your journey.


We are one.

Stephen King is the master of the Super-Duper Magical Negro...without him whitesplaining why, who's to say?
White guilt?
Liberal elite superiority complex?

Here are what I call the Five Points of the Magical Negro; the five most common attributes:

He or she is a person of color, typically black, often Native American, in a story about predominantly white characters.
He or she seems to have nothing better to do than help the white protagonist, who is often a stranger to the Magical Negro at first.
He or she disappears, dies, or sacrifices something of great value after or while helping the white protagonist.
He or she is uneducated, mentally handicapped, at a low position in life, or all of the above.
He or she is wise, patient, and spiritually in touch. Closer to the earth, one might say. He or she often literally has magical powers.

The archetype of the Magical Negro is an issue of race. It is the subordination of a minority figure masked as the empowerment of one. The Magical Negro has great power and wisdom, yet he or she only uses it to help the white main character; he or she is not threatening because he or she only seeks to help, never hurt. The white main character's well-being comes before the Magical Negro's because the main character is of more value, more importance.

The Magical Negro is like the happy slave, glad to sacrifice himself, his happiness, his time, something of value to him, in order to help the white character. And at end of the story, many audiences often end up quietly wondering, "Well, why'd she do that?" That is, if they remember the character at all.

The Green Mile, The Talisman, The Stand, and The Shining—these great novels harbor his most popular Magical Negroes. The summaries of these characters speak for themselves as to why they're Magical Negroes. It becomes most apparent when the Five Points of the Magical Negro are applied to each character.

In The Shining, Dick Hallorann is the cook at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. Hallorann takes an instant liking to Danny, the five-year-old son of Wendy and Jack Torrance, because little Danny also has what Hallorann calls The Shine (psychic powers). The family is staying at the Overlook Hotel for the winter as caretakers. The hotel has a history of bad things happening there, including the case of Delbert Grady, a previous winter caretaker who suffered from cabin fever and ended up killing his family before committing suicide. When the evil ghosts of the hotel drive Danny's father mad, Danny psychically calls Hallorann for help. Hallorann leaves Florida immediately. After he fights his way into the Hotel (he has to fight animals made of possessed shrubbery), he's knocked unconscious by the deranged father. In the film, Hallorann is even more strongly portrayed as the Magical Negro when he is brutally murdered when he enters the hotel to save Danny.

In the epic novel The Stand Mother Abigail is powerfully religious and magical. A 108-year-old black woman full of patience, kindness, and wisdom, she is the force that pulls all the members of what Tolkien would have called "the White" (the "Good") to her home in Nebraska after a super-flu kills off 99.44 percent of the world's population. Mother Abigail gives her guidance, wisdom, and advice to the chosen group of travelers (comprised of the protagonists of the story), and then she dies.

In The Talisman, in order to save his dying mother and the world, twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer must find the talisman, the nexus of all the worlds masked as a crystal-like globe perhaps three feet in circumference. It is Speedy Parker, a mysterious, kindly old guitar-playing black man working at an amusement park, who convinces Sawyer to embark on his quest. It is also Speedy, whom Sawyer meets again on his way from one ocean to the next, who tells Sawyer about the "magic juice," which helps Sawyer "flip" from our world to a parallel one known as the Territories. Though King cowrote The Talisman with Straub, I strongly believe that it was King who came up with Speedy. Call it assumption from past observation.

In The Green Mile, John Coffey is a new prisoner sentenced to death for raping and murdering two young girls. A very big, tall, child-like black man, he possesses enormous psychic powers. And he's also innocent. As the story moves along, Coffey breathes life into Mr. Jingles the mouse, cures main character Paul Edgecombe (who is in charge of death row) of his bladder infection, cures the warden's wife of her brain cancer, and performs other miracles. Nevertheless, in the end, Coffey, tired of suffering from the heightened awareness of the world's evils and too aware of his lowly position as a poor black man, asks to go through with the execution.

All four characters are African-American. All four are harmless.

Excerpts from an article from a self-described, 'educated African American women'...lest you or any others have righteous indignation for what she has written. http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/stephen-kings-super-duper-magical-negroes/




Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?

Brilliant. Thank you sooooooooo much!