Black Reads: Issue 036
We gon' test this thing out, but know I'm an artist—and I'm sensitive about my shit.
The Tale of a Magical Negro
Written by Loc
I grew up in a white town in Southern Indiana surrounded by sundown towns. Jasper, Indiana, to the north of us, was once the KKK capital of Indiana. To the south, Santa Claus, Indiana, a town known for burning a cross when a Black high school team came to town in 1988. I was born two years later.
The town consisted of 4 Black kids, 2 light-skinned and 2 dark-skinned. All 4 of us were children of the system adopted by white folks. We were basically sent to the heart of white America, alone. White supremacy came at us from inside and outside of the home.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I got treated way better. An example I can give is that almost no one gave me shit for openly wanting to vote for Obama. The dark-skinned kid in my grade got fried for it. A group of guys confronted him and said you are only voting for him because you are Black.
Me: I am voting for Obama.
A guy who’s a known democrat: Yeah, but you aren’t doing it just because you are Black.
Me: Aren’t you voting for Obama? *stares in Black confusion*
Colorism allowed me the blind eye needed to eventually escape. My proximity to whiteness gave them the illusion I had some kind of loyalty to them.
Still, none of us got a free pass. We all scrambled to find ourselves a role within white supremacy for us to survive.
I found myself in the role of the magical negro. Being light-skinned gave them the false sense of security to trust me with their secrets (they viewed me as a house nigga). Making it a role for me to easily fit into. I learned, if you help white people with their problems, they will not give you problems; for the most part.
Taking care of white people’s problems became a part of my life. When I was almost out of college, I offered to take a former high school classmate’s dad to his house because he drank too much at a wedding (I was back at home to attend it). On the drive home, this 50-something-year-old white man started asking me if he raised his kids right and wanted some financial advice. I said, “Your kids are alright enough and buy land”. I was able to answer this in a single sentence because white people came to me with problems, a lot.
As a kid, I did not understand what I was doing. All of this subconsciously happened. I never truly understood why white people just came to me with their problems. I don’t think they did either. We were the first Black people in the town, at least in recent memory. I’m gonna blame Oprah because that’s the only Black person they all knew. The way she could guide white people through their shit on national TV was astounding. Wait, did Oprah influence me into being a magical negro? I digress.
The aftermath of realizing I was a racial trope has impacted my life greatly. Forcing me to constantly analyze friendships and family relationships. Cutting family members out of my life and ending 5+ years of friendships has become the outcome. I have a hard time believing anything that comes out of a white person’s mouth at this point. I’ve been fooled once; the next one is on me.
I honestly didn’t think of it as a bad thing until I was far enough away from home to see what was really happening. I fixed people’s problems; how could that be bad? Now I understand I was using my magic to serve massa. I wasn’t using my magic for me or the community.
Which brings me to the current day. They don’t need our help right now. They are solely responsible for the state of the nation. They know this, but don’t want to do it on their own. Using that term, I recently questioned (ally) and saying we are all allies. They are trying to summon our magic to take care of their problems.
We are in dark times. It’s no time for us to be giving our magic away to white folks. We need to use our magic to strengthen our communities and prepare. They didn’t think one of their own could possibly be a fascist dictator. We did everything we could to warn them. Now we must protect ourselves for the years to come. Don’t be their magical negro.
Stay woke,
Loc
When it comes to the rhetoric of Black excellence, probably the most egregious in terms of spreading the pro-capitalist gospel is Jäy-Z. But his version of this grift is even more devious because of the way he positions himself as the funnel that catches the wealth so that it trickles down to the rest of the community.
 | A guest post by
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I think this is interesting and reminds me of the complexity of trying to do Black work within the system. You have to know who is who. Allies exist and are very much necessary in this society to afford change. An institution against you does not listen to you alone. Are allies flawed and part of that system? Absolutely. So while knowledge and ‘magic’ is communal and certainly should be safeguarded, it’s a careful game figuring whose access is damaging and whose is necessary or even both.
What makes this interesting is that it accidentally exposes a cultural transition happening in real time.
“Clocking into my Substack shift” sounds like a joke, but it reveals something deeper:
people no longer want work that only extracts labor. They want work that converts thought, personality, taste, and perspective into value.
The old economy separated labor from self.
The emerging one monetizes selfhood directly.
And “All roads lead back to Cranes In The Sky” is the perfect example of modern symbolic compression.
One sentence carrying an entire emotional architecture:
avoidance, overachievement, movement as anesthesia, productivity masking emotional displacement.
That’s the internet’s new language now.
Not explanation. Recognition.