Loving America and the media

There’s a relatively recent (and recently very difficult to find… on which I’ll elaborate later) video about Barack the Magic Negro. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, perhaps you have not. I first saw it about a week ago after seeing a crawler on CNN about the GOP issuing statements distancing themselves from it. By the next day, it had been pulled from YouTube due to “terms of service” violations. I could speculate that it’s because Google CEO Eric Schmidt is an Obama supporter, but I don’t really believe that. I think everyone fears controversy and conflict at all costs, and the “to get along, go along” mentality has more reign in America than at any time in our history.
For those who have not seen the video, I have managed to locate a copy of it at http://jestersdomain.com/barack.htm. Equally important is the article which played a part in inspiring the parody (‘the LA Times they call him that ’cause he’s black but not authenticly’) at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenstein19mar19,0,5335087.story. Finally, a link to the (partial?) transcript from Rush Limbaugh’s show where he played the video (effectively the song, since it wasn’t really visible over the radio :)) – http://mediamatters.org/items/200703200012 – interesting if you have the time.
My reflections. First, the song is quite humorous. It’s a magnifying glass on Al Sharpton, who was the real point to begin with, and perhaps to a lesser extent the columnist David Ehrenstein.
Second, whether it’s racist or prejudiced is irrelevant. While I don’t condone racism, I can and will defend prejudices strongly. We all have them, and they are not specifically related to race, applying also to gender, sexual orientation, facial and physical proportionality, education, smell, environment, and virtually innumerable other real or perceived characteristics. You might even call them instincts. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong, but nature and/or nurture have given them to us for a reason.
Third, I was struck by a tie between Ehrenstein’s article and Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, which surprised me. In retrospect, I think I came to this link more by way of his references to other ‘magic negros’ (Portier, et al.) and Cleaver’s reference to “the ogre.”
Fourth, it’s astounding how quickly this video disappeared from the Internet, in large part because it caused conflict. Not what you want in a herd of cattle. Thank the benevolent entities for removing the necessity for you to consider it.
Fifth, I have no latent guilt for slavery, much as I cannot stomach the idea of “original sin” by attribution to “human nature.” (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM, #405) I am not a generalization of all people, nor do I accept the guilt of others. While “human nature” is a highly reasonable prejudice, which can reasonably be expected to be applied to all objects one classifies as human, I and I alone am responsible for holding or not holding this attribute.
Finally, and perhaps most interestingly and importantly, it led to a lot of thought and reflection because I did not immediately classify it as racist or prejudicial and dismiss it offhand. I just posted a quote on my QuoteBook application that I feel fits this discourse very nicely – “A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us,” Ralph Waldo Emerson. So, let your mind be startled. By intelligence, fear, doubt, weakness, strength, certainty, questioning… by everything. There are many things we can learn if we are willing to think and to use our minds, sometimes from unexpected sources.