Everyone quoted in the media condemns the song. You know it: “Barack the Magic Negro.”
It’s the one that a former Tennessee GOP state chairman, John “Chip” Saltsman, sent to his Christmas list and the one Rush Limbaugh played on his show to the great amusement of listeners. It satirizes a 2007 Los Angeles Times column by David Ehrenstein that called Obama a “Magic Negro” because he’s unthreatening to whites and plays to their guilt.
“Offensive,” “racist” and “stupid” are some of the comments about the song. We would say the same of the column.
Saltsman, who wants to be head of the Republican National Committee, deserves the criticism. But not because he is a racist.
He and Ehrenstein both just don’t get it.
They are trapped in a 1980s America where the racial stereotypes and attitudes they critique still resonated with the American public and where race still defined people in full.
For Limbaugh’s listeners the song’s conceit may still be funny, but for the rest of America, especially young America, it’s stale in the same way the “greed is good” mantra reflects the mood of the nation and Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” is racy. In a city with black women in the top three posts, and in a state where a black former lieutenant governor is running for the national GOP job, it is particularly dated.
The only people who still argue about whether someone is “black enough” are those who no longer hold cultural sway but still command a media presence.
No one wins the presidency — the most powerful position in the world — because people feel sorry for him or her. Over two long years Obama proved himself to the American public in a grueling contest against one of the most politically powerful figures in his own party and then against a lauded war hero.
The fact that Saltsman thought the old jokes were still funny says a lot about why the Republicans lost the hearts and minds of the American people in recent years — and the presidential election. If Republicans want to win back voters they must choose a chairman who has his finger a lot closer to the zeitgeist than Saltsman and who can communicate the core principles of the Republican Party — low taxes, small government and individual freedom — to the young generation who voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Laughing at fringe leftists may rally a talk show audience, but it will not win elections. And it will not reacquaint America with the values that made us the most powerful and respected nation in the world.
