Barack the Magic Negro
The magical Negro is an archetype which was first applied to presidential candidate Obama by movie and culture critic David Ehrenstein, in a Los Angeles Times op ed column of March 19, 2007. According to Ehrenstein, the magical Negro is a non threatening black hero in the popular media, usually the cinema, who was invented to ease feelings of white guilt over slavery and racial injustice. He is noble and devoid of sexual motives, and appears suddenly, out of nowhere, to magically solve the problems of white people.
Ehrenstein opined that "Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record or what he's written in his two books, or even what he's actually said". Rather, Obama was a popular contender for the presidency because whites were projecting their "fantasies of curative black benevolence" on him...
Barack the Magic Negro - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia