# The Magical Negro



## Brian G Turner (Aug 23, 2012)

I hadn't heard of the "Magical Negro" trope until I saw it mentioned on RequiresHate, so I looked it up:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNegro
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20041025/kinga.shtml
http://www.yale.edu/opa/arc-ybc/v29.n21/story3.html
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc45.2002/colombe/

Quite a lot of reading there, but in terms of plot development, I visualised it as like this:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/images/concise.jpg

My first thought is a kind of horror, because in my own WIP I have something dangerously close to a Magical Negro. However, with reflection I think the similarity is superficial - though I'm now pre-warned to be very careful to be aware of this trope.

Reading RequiresHate and various posts linked from it, I've really been kicked into awareness of how badly issues of race (and gender and sexuality) can be handled.

More than that, though, I get the feeling this is a rising backlash against "anglo-Saxon" fantasy, especially as the readership is becoming truly international, and the desire to be challenged crosses all sorts of cultural borders. Especially after linking to a BBC news article recently about how India is becoming the world's biggest consumer of English-language fiction.

Food for thought.


----------



## Darth Angelus (Aug 24, 2012)

I am not sure I have understood this trope correctly, but I can only say this is a very difficult and complex (albeit important) topic.

I think there is a potentially very real danger in fiction that even in cases where the intentions might be well-meaning towards the minority, the special treatment itself can uphold prejudice. It is a difficult balance as a writer.
Even if the writer wants to uphold black people as good people, if they go to far in separating them from whites in narrative treatment, even if they differ in a somehow positive way, it sorts of give approval to viewing black people as a separate kind.
If they are portrayed positively, yet somehow patronizingly (as I think this trope is referring to, after first read), it is worse.

I am concerned that black people tend to die early in fiction, and are rarely portrayed as the real major heroes. However, in line with what I say above, I would only want this neutralized, not reversed.

I think ethnicity can play its to the extent that coming from an "underdog background" in society (if that is the case) can give certain motivations to a character, but beyond that, they shouldn't really be treated differently than anyone else, because human nature is still the same.


----------



## Kylara (Aug 24, 2012)

Reminds me of something sort of related...in my politics A-level classes I remember being given a quote/interview thing from a black lesbian woman in a wheelchair who was angered by the fact that she had never been denied a job, because not only did she "tick all the boxes" but by rejecting her they might somehow get reprimanded. She said how she got many jobs that she was unqualified for, or which she had applied for as an off-chance hope, and was disappointed in the special treatment becming more important the her.

It reminded me a little of this...are we not allowed to have black voodoo magician people in our novels? Because I'm pretty sure that the culture that created that religion (I'm unsure of it's status so treating like shamans) consisted of black people (non-racist way)...


----------



## Stephen Palmer (Aug 24, 2012)

I find myself surprised to read about this, Brian. There are a number of 'Magical Negroes' in my _Muezzinland_ but I treated them as real human beings regardless of their origins. The thing about _Muezzinland_ though is that everyone is from Africa, so their colour or stance didn't matter (which I felt was one of the points in writing it.)


----------



## The Judge (Aug 24, 2012)

I looked into this a while ago, can't recall now what had brought it to my attention.  But in the wikipedia article it refers to Sidney Poitier in _The Defiant Ones_ -- not on the basis that he is magical (which rather seems to miss the point of calling the trope that, that to my mind)  but because he is willing to sacrifice himself for a white man -- which is more the Noble Savage trope, I suppose. 

I found that a little odd.  It's been a while since I saw the film, but I thought the Tony Curtis character also makes a decision equating to sacrificing himself to save Poitier's character.  I also thought it was a study in both of them realising that friendship was more important than colour.  And if at the end Poitier had remained on the train, leaving Curtis to his fate, would the critics have then have rounded on it as showing that a black man is incapable of friendship and sacrifice?  I dunno.

Is it worse to show the Noble Savage rather than continuing to have the Ignoble Savage?  If a white man dies for a black man, is that inverting the trope? Or is it racist in presenting white men as morally superior ie in being ready to die for others?


----------



## Kylara (Aug 24, 2012)

That made me think of *Brave New World* Judge, I'm not sure why, maybe the idea of Noble/Ignoble Savage. Actually I love *BNW*, and I think it deals terrifyingly well with issues of "class" and elitism...


----------



## Gabe. (Sep 13, 2012)

It's definitely something that we have to be wary of in our current political climate. Although it may seem a great idea to be trying to change the anglo-centric nature of heros in fantasy and science fiction, too much of a good thing can be a little bit uncomfortable.

In Harper Lee's _To Kill A Mockingbird_, she is guilty of this despite the work itself being, in my opinion, a thorough chastisement of racism. She was still writing at a time where negros were considered the 'other' and it shows in her work:



			
				Harper Lee said:
			
		

> The warm bittersweet smell of clean Negro welcomed us as we entered the churchyard



I think the lesson to take away is not to be TOO overt. Minorities need not have years of discrimination made up for by positive discrimination; the best way to be politically correct is forget that minorities exist at all in my opinion, and write as though all are equal (because or course, that is the only real conclusion.)


----------



## Dave (Sep 13, 2012)

Sorry, I didn't read all the links, but it strikes me from reading the replies that you are only citing western/first-world stories. We are all conditioned by these same stories from a very young age and are therefore obviously going to think and write in the same terms ourselves. I have a 1952 Beano annual in the attic with some other old 1950's children's books that are incredibly racist; unbelievably so. Yet, they are only 60 years old. Actually, they are quite shocking in the level of racism contained within them.

Yes, "black voodoo magician people" are a by-product of African culture, but the Evil, Zombie, drug-fuelled, mind-controlling, anti-Christian idea is purely a product of Hollywood scriptwriters and is also the bogeyman to frighten children into being Good, churchgoing subjects, and who will fight to the death for King and Country in foreign wars against the uncivilised.

If you really want to write without any western/white/first-world tropes and preconceptions then you probably need to first forget everything you have ever read before.

When my daughter was young we had an African children's book. I've no idea where it came from but we have always had a wide variety of books in our house from many places. It was a very strange and weird little story about the Creation, and how God made children from firing clay figures in different colours. I'm only mentioning it because I can't see any way that such an odd book would have been written by a western author. I expect the same would be true of Hindi and Chinese literature.


----------



## Brian G Turner (Oct 17, 2012)

Okay, the more I look at this, the more I find it to be a potential straw man argument.

For example, Morpheus in The Matrix is suggested to be a Magical Negro. However, from what I've read elsewhere, the part of Morpheus was originally offered to Sean Connery, and Neo to Will Smith. If that is true, then what we have is a false argument claiming the race card on an "enabler" character.

I haven't seen The Green Mile, but from what little I've read about it, one of the characters is intentionally set to address questions relating to Jesus. So complaining about that character being some form of stereotype potentially misses the point of the film (though I'll be happy to take advisement on the issue).

There is a character type that is a "facillitator" or "enabler" who helps the protagonist develop further. The argument here seems to be that they may not be black, because that's racist. However, if this trope can only be cast as a white actor, that's racist.

Will be interesting to see how this discussion develops.


----------



## Karn Maeshalanadae (Oct 17, 2012)

I said:


> \I haven't seen The Green Mile, but from what little I've read about it, one of the characters is intentionally set to address questions relating to Jesus. So complaining about that character being some form of stereotype potentially misses the point of the film (though I'll be happy to take advisement on the issue)




I haven't seen The Green Mile in years, since I was a little kid, so I never really understood where the healer had gotten his powers from. All I knew was, he sucked in disease, and spat it back out in what I thought were locusts. The movie itself never actually explained how he had gotten those powers, and I've never read the book series.


----------



## Boneman (Oct 18, 2012)

I said:


> Okay, the more I look at this, the more I find it to be a potential straw man argument.
> 
> I haven't seen The Green Mile, but from what little I've read about it, one of the characters is intentionally set to address questions relating to Jesus. So complaining about that character being some form of stereotype potentially misses the point of the film (though I'll be happy to take advisement on the issue).
> 
> ...


 

Stephen King says in 'On Writing' that John Coffey, the character deliberately has the same initials as Jesus Christ, because: '_I decided to give him the same initials of the most famous innocent man of all time' _something Faulkner had done in 'Light in August' previously. The Green Mile was written because of King's interest in 'why, if there's a God, such terrible things happen'. But he emphasises 'It's my interest_. It's no big deal._' Using a magical negro (which John Coffey definitely was) added an incredible impact to the story - I can't imagine it being half as good if a white actor had played the part, and in essence it reflected racial divisions that existed at the time, extremely well. Incidentally, King wasn't sure, until right up to the end of the book if Coffey would live or die, though he wanted him to live because he liked him and pitied him.

The problem as I see it, for us wannabe writers is this: write a book where there's an anglo-saxon world and you'll get howled down as a racist, a might-whitey reflector. Include a magical negro and you get howled down as a racist just the same... YOU CAN'T WIN. So just write the book you want to write and let others do all the worrying about whether you're racist or not (and apparently, they will...).


----------



## Stephen Palmer (Oct 18, 2012)

Dave said:


> When my daughter was young we had an African children's book. I've no idea where it came from but we have always had a wide variety of books in our house from many places. It was a very strange and weird little story about the Creation, and how God made children from firing clay figures in different colours. I'm only mentioning it because I can't see any way that such an odd book would have been written by a western author. I expect the same would be true of Hindi and Chinese literature.


 
African creation myths are wonderful. The Dogon one especially.


----------



## Connavar (Oct 18, 2012)

I dont mind the magical negro but i get so sick of reading modern fantasy that hasnt improved from early 1900s fantasy stereotype.  The fact there is often this holy black dude, that is so wise and must often die to make the hero learn something is so stupid,offending.   

I get so tired of reading it in new books.....


----------



## alchemist (Oct 18, 2012)

Boneman said:


> The problem as I see it, for us wannabe writers is this: write a book where there's an anglo-saxon world and you'll get howled down as a racist, a might-whitey reflector. Include a magical negro and you get howled down as a racist just the same... YOU CAN'T WIN. So just write the book you want to write and let others do all the worrying about whether you're racist or not (and apparently, they will...).


 
This is so true, and completely applies to everything I read in that Requires Hate discussion a while back. For some people, there is no right option you can take, so forget about them and write for the average person, not the loudest.


----------



## Jo Zebedee (Oct 18, 2012)

What happened when I read this thread was this:

I had a black character in my book. Not for any political reason, or any controversial reason, but because when I imagined him he was black. He is one of the central characters and is through the whole book, but he, for whatever reason, doesn't make it through to book 2. (I have some guys on the site reading it for me, so I don't want to give too much away.)

Now, Northern Ireland defines multicultualism as having fresh pasta in Tesco's...I'm being tongue in check btw, and it is improving, but as a society it is overwhelmingly white. (partially due to the fact that for a long time it wasn't listed in most people's "must go and settle there" list, so immigration wasn't a force here as it was in eg. England.)

I had wanted, perhaps naively, to reflect that it is changing, but ...based on this thread, I changed the character to white N. Irish, as I felt I could easily have the tokenism finger pointed at me. And do you know what? He's exactly the same character, his background is the same; came to Belfast as a young kid, etc. etc., it's just that we just lost a well-rounded ethnic character because of the fear of offense. 

I think that's kind of sad.

Just seen Alc and Boneman's; I'm not changing it back. Perhaps if I was established, I'd say well people will know I'm not, but I think it's just another thing that could give an easy knockback.


----------



## Boneman (Oct 18, 2012)

Springs, I had something almost identical in a character. You can't win... 

Personally, I feel if enough people ignore the fanatics who think they know how we should or shouldn't write, they'll eventually die from lack of oxygen, and then proper, reasoned debate (the type we have here!) will take its place, and attitudes might change. Roll on that day.


----------



## Brian G Turner (Oct 18, 2012)

Connavar said:


> I get so tired of reading it in new books.....



Do you have any examples? Simply that I can't recall noticing it in my own reading lists, so I don't know whether I've simply glossed over it or not.


----------



## AnyaKimlin (Oct 18, 2012)

I have black mentor - like Springs said he came that way and he didn't start out as a mentor, but when the white mentor became senile he was the obvious character to take over.  His son may fit into Magical Negro but the only reason Jack needs to be mixed race is because of his parents race.  Does he count given as he is the reason my MC is one-eyed ?

TBH I have a ton of tropes in my characters and I remaining unrepentant with them.


----------



## Connavar (Oct 18, 2012)

Boneman said:


> Springs, I had something almost identical in a character. You can't win...
> 
> Personally, I feel if enough people ignore the fanatics who think they know how we should or shouldn't write, they'll eventually die from lack of oxygen, and then proper, reasoned debate (the type we have here!) will take its place, and attitudes might change. Roll on that day.



I think springs idea for black character sounded good and its a shame fear of tokensim he changed the skin color.   Much worse than any magical negro is the defualt whiteness of books like this.   It be nice for once if the important character was of color and not just a tool for yet another white hero.

Fanatics?  its only human to want to read an awesome character that look like me for once and isnt a negative stereotype.  

There are many good authors for readers of color like me.  I have greats like Cj Cherryh and Le Guin so spare me from writers who only have the token black Guy to sacrifice......


----------



## Connavar (Oct 18, 2012)

I said:


> Do you have any examples? Simply that I can't recall noticing it in my own reading lists, so I don't know whether I've simply glossed over it or not.



Even i glossed over and feel guilty afterwards.   I wont support this kind anymore with money.    

There is that Thorns series....

I dont know too much about magical negro trope,  i dont like either when they make an elf black for no reason like they are human and show multiculturualism. 

Joe Abercrombie is positive example, Ferro was dark skinned and from Gurkish lands but There was no Big deal about her skin color.   She was a main character, action heroine.   Didnt make her a Nuban.....


----------



## alchemist (Oct 18, 2012)

springs said:


> What happened when I read this thread was this:
> 
> I had a black character in my book. Not for any political reason, or any controversial reason, but because when I imagined him he was black. He is one of the central characters and is through the whole book, but he, for whatever reason, doesn't make it through to book 2. (I have some guys on the site reading it for me, so I don't want to give too much away.)
> 
> ...



It is, and I can see why you did it. 

But you still can't please everyone. Have your black character, who has the same issues as everyone else, and you'll be accused of tokenism. Make him different; explore the problems a black man in sci-fi Northern Ireland might have and someone will accuse you of writing about something you know nothing about. Tell them you did loads of research and someone will say, "Yeah, but you didn't _live_ it."

So, write whatever colour/race/creed you want, I say.

*gets off soapbox, puts it in boot of car, gets Indian takeaway*


----------



## clovis-man (Oct 18, 2012)

Darth Angelus said:


> I am concerned that black people tend to die early in fiction, and are rarely portrayed as the real major heroes. However, in line with what I say above, I would only want this neutralized, not reversed.


 
After watching *The Serpent and the Rainbow*, *Mars Attacks*, *Star Trek II* and *Damnation Alley*, I was beginning to think that Paul Winfield would never survive a movie.


----------



## J-WO (Oct 19, 2012)

alchemist said:


> This is so true, and completely applies to everything I read in that Requires Hate discussion a while back. For some people, there is no right option you can take, so forget about them and write for the average person, not the loudest.



That RH has become the go-to-name for a feminist, POC critic is a bad sign for progressiveness in Fantasy and SF, and no author should have her as a co-pilot as they write, IMHO.

I got into a debate with her on Twitter once and, at almost exactly the time she started losing, I started getting all these tweets from blatant sockpuppet accounts saying things like 'You are creepy, ugly and deeply unattractive.' 

Hardly news. I laughed it off.  But there's a lot of sensitive people in fandom and I could have been one of them for all she knew. My viewpoint went from 'Here's a feisty individual who it's diverting to have a debate with' into 'Wow, here's a possible sociopath who doesn't care about being right, but actually wants to _break_ me.' Genius, really- a wacko who's found a nigh-unimpeachable moral high ground to rain nastiness from and even gets applauded for doing so. Her id must be having a blast.

OK, so the above might be a bit derail-ey, but here's my point- racism and sexism if SF/F is too vast a problem to let someone like that take care of it. If we are to take on prejudice in our writing seriously, we need to start being connoisseurs when it comes to the online critics of prejudice in SF lit. Currently, we neck any old junkfood just because it has the right labels on its loud Styrofoam box. If we keep doing that, we're never going to get better.


----------



## Boneman (Oct 19, 2012)

Connavar said:


> Fanatics? its only human to want to read an awesome character that look like me for once and isnt a negative stereotype.


 

sorry, misunderstood - I mean the person who attacks your writing for being racist because you have/haven't included the right race/gender to make it  fit their opinion. And that includes including (you can see I'm a writer, can't you...?) other races, just so you can show you're not racist. 

I couldn't agree more with your sentiment, above.


----------



## AnyaKimlin (Oct 19, 2012)

The trouble is if we worry too much about offending people with the characters we write then books will continue to lack diversity.


----------



## James Coote (Oct 19, 2012)

A while back I listened to a radio program about this (though it was termed 'Mystical Black Man'). It was in relation to the film Avatar. All the naavi/aliens are played by black actors, and all the 'humans' by white actors.

Recently, there was a debate about gay characters (or the lack thereof) in video games. There were two arguments:

1.
That gay characters were seriously under represented in video games

2.
That actually there were plenty of gay characters, but that if their sexuality added nothing to the story, it would remain unsaid. Or to put it another way, if their sexuality never came up, then it was up to the player to use their imagination or pretend they were gay or straight or whatever their preference was.

Now, if we take the second argument, you can't really apply it to video games, as you the player can clearly see they either have black or white or whatever coloured skin

However, with literature, characters don't necessarily have a skin colour. If it is never mentioned, the reader will use their imagination to fill in the blanks, and if they are black, they might fill in that blank skin colour black instead of white.

Species-Races in fantasy and aliens in science fiction are stand ins for foreigners, but all too often, they are added to give the piece a splash of colour or evoke a sense of 'the exotic,' rather than because the author actually wants to explore something meaningful about race. It's instances like this where authors inadvertently stick their foot in it

I remember reading another article where a lady was describing a conversation she often ended up having. It'd go like this:

Person A: So where are you from?
Lady: London
Person A: Oh, ok, but I mean where are you from _originally_?
Lady: London. I was born and raised here.
Person A: No, I mean, where are your family from?
and so on ...

The subtext is basically Person A say "So, you're black...."

What is interesting is that some people I ask this will have been born and raised in the UK, but will come out and say "I'm Jamaican" or "I'm from Liverpool" or whatever.

Essentially the question "where are you from?" is actually asking "where do you identify yourself with?" Having lived in London, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, I gave up trying to guess where people are from after a while. Most of the time, I can't guess their ethnicity, especially as a large numbers of people have mixed parentage anyway. Even if I was to somehow correctly guess their ethnicity, there is still no way to answer that question of "where do you identify yourself with" just by looking at someone. 

Another point is when the countries the author is basing their fantasy kingdoms on seep through by way of names, even if skin colour / race isn't explicitly stated. If Ngombe and Tmona are fighting Marcus and Julia, you can probably guess which pair the author imagined as being black and which white


----------



## clovis-man (Oct 20, 2012)

James Coote said:


> A while back I listened to a radio program about this (though it was termed 'Mystical Black Man'). It was in relation to the film Avatar. All the naavi/aliens are played by black actors, and all the 'humans' by white actors.


 
This has been going on since Amos 'n' Andy. Nothing new. And insidious. A little different but equally nasty fact is that Anna May Wong, a talented Chinese-American actor was seldom given any outright ethnic roles unless the role was one of a villain. She was a murderer in *Shanghai Express*, for example. Most Asian ethnic roles were given to white actors in "yellow face" (the term used for the practice), e.g., detective Charlie Chan was played by Warner Oland and Sidney Toler in the 1930s and 1940s. Up for the role of O-Lan in the movie version of Pearl Buck's *The Good Earth*, Wong was deselected in favor of caucasian actor Luise Rainer.


----------



## Connavar (Oct 22, 2012)

Boneman said:


> sorry, misunderstood - *I mean the person who attacks your writing for being racist because you have/haven't included the right race/gender to make it  fit their opinion.* And that includes including (you can see I'm a writer, can't you...?) other races, just so you can show you're not racist.
> 
> I couldn't agree more with your sentiment, above.



I find those people to be silly, because too much PC is a danger to creativity,freedom to write what you want in your books.  Also it hurts minority readers if writers feel they have to be PC, make people into quota.  Oh i must have a black,brown people to just not to be insensitive.

All i want is an open minded writer that knows there is more diversity today than it was 1000 years ago in Europe.


----------



## Brian G Turner (Nov 3, 2012)

I'm beginning the find the "magical negro" argument something of a strawman now - it seems if a mentor is white, is is just a mentor - but put race into it and it's racist.

I think some of the arguments about racism and sexism we've seen come up in certain quarters have a disarming effect because couched in the trolling is a real issue we're forced to think more carefully about - not least, how are we using the issues of sex, gender, and race, and are they being used intelligently?

But too many of the arguments I'm seeing elsewhere seem to be arguments for their own sake. It seems to have become the case that if your characters are all white, you are racist; add a person of colour, and you are racist - unless that character is a protagonist who spends a significant amount of time existentialising about the unfair advantages of "mighty whitey".

I guess a lot of people are easily disarmed when the race or sex or gender card is played, because at the heart is a good argument that these subjects can and should be addressed in intelligent ways.

But too often it feels like cards are being played for the sake of it - though if you note that trolls are the ones loading these arguments, that should be context enough to see through them.

What personally surprises me is how much genre fiction is based on violence, killing, and murder - but apparently that's not an issue of concern, but god forbid if you don't put 21st century egalitarian liberal sensibilities into stabs at mediaeval realism.


----------



## Connavar (Nov 4, 2012)

I thought Magical negro sounded bad idea from the start.   I just mention bad portrayal, generic,negative stereotypes that use minority characters.  This mentor, magical negro thing is too narrow for all the troubled characterization.

Mediavel realism isnt the reason there is token black,uber cool,silent side character in many fantasy books of a certain kind.  Medieval realism is a fantasy world where men treat women like they did in those actual times for example.

Brian violence as entertainment has always been a big part of human culture.  I can dislike it but still enjoy strong stories about violence,murder.  Heck whole human history can learned from history of wars,murders,violence.


----------



## kshRox (Nov 4, 2012)

I said:


> I'm beginning the find the "magical negro" argument something of a strawman now - it seems if a mentor is white, is is just a mentor - but put race into it and it's racist.



I'm with you here.

If a mentor is in the majority s/he is a mentor.
If a mentor is a minority s/he is magical? (sound like too much emphasis on race)

exceptions - 
 - If the mentor is Korean, he is Chuin!
 - If the mentor is Chinese he is Jackie Chan!

Both of these characters were, are and shall always be magical in my world!!!!


----------



## Wiglaf (Nov 4, 2012)

Having only read the first page of posts, I think that the point is, "Don't have only one character of a different real world ethnicity and make them the mentor figure in order to be enlightened."  You also probably shouldn't make them the villain.  Try having two or more, one of which is _*not*_ the villain nor the mentor.


----------



## kshRox (Nov 4, 2012)

Wiglaf said:


> Having only read the first page of posts, I think that the point is, "Don't have only one character of a different real world ethnicity and make them the mentor figure in order to be enlightened."  You also probably shouldn't make them the villain.  Try having two or more, one of which is _*not*_ the villain nor the mentor.




After thinking about it, I'm not so sure.
If the 'magical' character has something cultural to share which may enlighten the majority protagonist I can see the point.

Sometimes contributions by minorities are overlooked and having a family background in Mexico/Native American (Apache) there is a huge pseudo theological/cultural mysticism that is prevalent and probably very interesting to the uninitiated.

If anyone has seen the movie 'Like Water for Chocolate' it touches upon one element of this much deeper tapestry very well. BTW - An excellent movie.


----------



## Wiglaf (Nov 4, 2012)

kshRox said:


> After thinking about it, I'm not so sure.
> If the 'magical' character has something cultural to share which may enlighten the majority protagonist I can see the point.
> 
> Sometimes contributions by minorities are overlooked and having a family background in Mexico/Native American (Apache) there is a huge pseudo theological/cultural mysticism that is prevalent and probably very interesting to the uninitiated.
> ...


I didn't catch that aspect reading the book, _Como Agua para Chocolate_.  However, I'm not sure if it is a book/movie difference or a weakness in my Spanish reading ability.
Either way, I do not disagree with you; I just think that more characters of a nationality would make a ethnic mentor less of a token.  If there are diverse groups, why is there only one representative?  I think a _____ mentor, tavern owner, and member of the bad guys' side would be preferable to just a mentor in most cases.  Of course, if there is a good reason to do otherwise, there would be an exception.  I am primarily addressing those situations where the nationality seems non-integral to the story.


----------



## kshRox (Nov 4, 2012)

Wiglaf said:


> I didn't catch that aspect reading the book, _Como Agua para Chocolate_.  However, I'm not sure if it is a book/movie difference or a weakness in my Spanish reading ability.
> Either way, I do not disagree with you; I just think that more characters of a nationality would make a ethnic mentor less of a token.  If there are diverse groups, why is there only one representative?  I think a _____ mentor, tavern owner, and member of the bad guys' side would be preferable to just a mentor in most cases.  Of course, if there is a good reason to do otherwise, there would be an exception.  I am primarily addressing those situations where the nationality seems non-integral to the story.



yea, I don't disagree with you either and in the movie, as you know from reading the book, almost the entire cast is Mexican so it follows your rule of thumb for avoiding blaring one-offs.


----------



## Lilmizflashythang (Nov 12, 2012)

I don't really care much for tropes, they always seem to pull contortionistic bends to make things fit. Tvtropes acted like Friedman's character in "The Bucket List" was a magical negro. I watched the movie, and saw both characters as two men dying, and wanting to get as much done as possible first. So what if Friedman's character helped Jack N.'s character regain contact and love of his daughter? When did doing something because it was the right thing make it so you were acting like a Magical black, hispanic, asian, or whatever character? 

Maybe it's just me. Then again, I always thought that if the black community had a problem with being treated with racial slurs from the white community, then maybe they ought not use the same slurs about each other, or call us 'crackers.'

I still think you can speak well, without being told that you are acting white. Perhaps we shouldn't cling to a culture that portrays any of the human race in a bad light.


----------



## ratsy (Nov 16, 2012)

I have seen some good examples of race in books.  I think the best example I have would be David Durham Anthony's Acacia Trilogy.  I loved the series and there were many races involved and the color of skin never was an issue.  His characters were dark skinned and there was a lot of slavery undertones across the seas, as he is somewhat of a historian I read.  He did such a great job with the story and involved something he is passionate about . But it in no way came across to me as preachy.  Quite the opposite. 

Brent Weeks new series is an odd one in this aspect.  I think I read early on in the series that the characters were black but in my minds eye they were white.  Not sure why, maybe because of the lack of reference to skin tone that is where the brain goes because it is used to the stereotypical fantasy setting.  Even after they mentioned it again I still couldn't picture Kip different than what was already in my head. 

Another one that comes to mind is a Portal fantasy series I read. The Eldarn Sequence.  It centered around 2 friends from Colorado who happen to travel to another world. The one character Mark was black and he had to deal with Racism even in the other world.  But the other world had a black race as well.  

So there really are not that many examples that I could think of but Acacia comes through as a job well done.


----------



## Connavar (Nov 18, 2012)

Lilmizflashythang said:


> Maybe it's just me. Then again, I always thought that if the black community had a problem with being treated with racial slurs from the white community, then maybe they ought not use the same slurs about each other, or call us 'crackers.'
> 
> I still think you can speak well, without being told that you are acting white. Perhaps we shouldn't cling to a culture that portrays any of the human race in a bad light.




Take little easy with the generalizations there about African-Americans.  People are not all rapper stereotype.   It sounds a bit ignorant.

Dont blame some lame trope title on actual real people of certain color.


----------



## Brian G Turner (May 21, 2014)

I said:


> Okay, the more I look at this, the more I find it to be a potential straw man argument.
> 
> For example, Morpheus in The Matrix is suggested to be a Magical Negro. However, from what I've read elsewhere, the part of Morpheus was originally offered to Sean Connery, and Neo to Will Smith. If that is true, then what we have is a false argument claiming the race card on an "enabler" character.
> 
> ...



This is really annoying - I have a character I want to describe as black, specifically to help ensure that "white male" is not the default. 

But ... he's a fecking mage (equivalent). 

So, by trying to create a diverse cast that different readers can associate with better, I will end up being accused exploiting the "magical negro" trope. 

But...I don't want this guy to be white. There's an important cultural association that means this can't be the case.

Damned if I do, damned if I don't. 

Nngh!


----------



## HareBrain (May 21, 2014)

Couldn't you avoid the trope by making him really rubbish at magic, even though he's a mage? And to balance that, really good at ... I dunno ... athletics?


----------



## Brian G Turner (May 21, 2014)

HareBrain said:


> Couldn't you avoid the trope by making him really rubbish at magic, even though he's a mage? And to balance that, really good at ... I dunno ... athletics?



A West African athlete? That couldn't be a stereotypical.


----------



## Toby Frost (May 22, 2014)

I think you're fine, Brian. I don't think the fact that this guy can literally do magic matters at all. I think it's more a matter of role in the story than power. I'm not even sure that 'mentor' covers it.

My understanding, especially given that the stereotype has been applied to characters in modern-day settings, is that the 'magic' being done is a sort of folksy wisdom. The character has a lowly social status, but an understanding of deep truths which he reminds the hero about. So, our hero, a wealthy white lawyer, is reminded by the black janitor that he is neglecting his family in the pursuit of money, and hurries back to see them. (Hero stays rich and happy, janitor stays poor and unthreatening). That sort of thing.

I can imagine several stock black wizards that don't fit this: the mystic/scholar/astronomer; the Arabian-Nights-type sorceror (although more often Middle Eastern); and the voodoo priest. None of them would have that effect unless they started behaving in a certain way.

And RH is a straight-up loony.


----------



## Mirannan (May 23, 2014)

Gabe. said:


> It's definitely something that we have to be wary of in our current political climate. Although it may seem a great idea to be trying to change the anglo-centric nature of heros in fantasy and science fiction, too much of a good thing can be a little bit uncomfortable.
> 
> In Harper Lee's _To Kill A Mockingbird_, she is guilty of this despite the work itself being, in my opinion, a thorough chastisement of racism. She was still writing at a time where negros were considered the 'other' and it shows in her work:
> 
> ...



That business about Negroes in the USA of a certain era might actually be true, because of differences in diet from whites. Trace compounds present in or derived from food come out in one's sweat.

An obvious example of this is that (to an English nose, anyway) people from many Mediterranean countries smell fairly strongly of garlic. Also, I'm told that Japanese people often think Westerners smell strongly of sour milk. (Japanese adults tend to have a problem digesting lactose, so they tend not to consume milk or milk products.)

BTW, it's my opinion that even human races in a fantasy setting don't have to correspond all that closely to real-world races - let's leave aside the "race is a social construct" malarkey for now. The clustering of various types of characteristic in real-world races might be at least partly coincidental.

To take an example, is it really necessarily the case that very dark skin will correlate with wide noses and tightly curled hair? Perhaps in Fantasyland, the dark-skinned people are that way because they live at high altitude (sun is very strong in the mountains) and therefore (I'm guessing!) features that we would associate with Caucasians, such as narrow noses, are associated with dark skin. Perhaps in the same world, the hot places are also generally very cloudy so facial shapes we associate with African blacks are associated with light-coloured skin.

History might be different as well, leading to very different distribution of technology level associated with the various races. After all, there was a high civilisation in southern Africa in the 1200s and 1300s IIRC; witnessed by the Zimbabwe ruins. I'm not sure anyone knows what happened to it.


----------

