Do you find that title offensive?

If so, how about this?

Obama the 'Magic Negro'

That IS the title of today's opinion piece by David Ehrenstein in the LA Times

Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

The 'magic negro' is there to assuage white man's burden of guilt built up by years of bigotry. And his name is Barack Obama.

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.

Oh, Mr. Ehrenstein did you mean a highly sexualized black man like Harold Ford? He likes girls you know. The racial undercurrent of this whole article is so offensive to me personally, but maybe that's because I just don't buy into the guilt trip. To suggest an intelligent black man can't possibly stand on his own merits. That 'white folk' are overlooking his glaring flaws to alleiviate a subconcious guilt for years celebrating segregation and confederate flags.

To those of you who think that it is just fine use the term 'magic negro' to describe Mr. Obama, well can we just say that the same applies to Condelezza Rice. She is such a 'magic negro', and as Secretary of State has served President Bush so well. Does she also display the teflon qualities you assign to the 'magic negro' syndrome? All the mistakes she has made in foreign policy just don't stick. Her foreign policy errors overlooked because of white man's guilt.

The white man's fear of an intelligent, articulate, clean 'Negro' is on full display in Mr. Ehrenstein's editorial. But this time it is not the sexual prowess that dear David finds threatening, it is that he has finally met a black whose intellectual prowess is greater than his own. Portraying Mr. Obama as the 'magic negro' the noble healing negro, it seems the only quality Mr. Ehrenstein IS interested in, has nothing to do with the mans merits or accomplishments, but is based soley on the color of Barack Obama's skin.

Mr. Ehrenstein, if you wanted to talk about the merit's of Barack Obama as a Presidential candidate why didn't you? You seem to be making the 'magic argument' that you think will derail his campaign, he's black.