Talk:magic nigger

RFV discussion: July–August 2022

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magic nigger

This entry, or one or more of its senses, has been nominated as derogatory pursuant to WT:DEROGATORY. It may be speedily deleted if it does not have at least three quotations meeting the attestation requirements within two weeks of the nomination date, that is, by 12 August 2022.

Tagged but AFAICT not listed. - -sche (discuss) 00:40, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

RFV-failed for sense 1 (which was the originally challenged sense). AG202 (talk) 15:19, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

RFD discussion: August–October 2022

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magic nigger

"(US politics, derogatory, offensive, ethnic slur) Barack Obama." Aside from the (irrelevant to policy, but intuitively troubling) fact that this is a highly offensive ethnic slur targeted to one individual that we cite from low-quality Usenet posts alone, I'm skeptical that the citations even support the definition. I could find plenty of Usenet posts directing any number of insults at almost any public figure. However, calling John Doe "a jackass", for example, does not imply that the word "jackass" should be defined as "(offensive) John Doe". It's possible that these senses actually support the broader definition "A black person who does not conform to the traditional stereotypes of a typical black individual; a black person who has overly assimilated or embraced white culture." that recently failed RfV, in which case maybe we should keep the citations but change the definition. I could be confused, and perhaps this really is a lexicalized insult for Obama in particular, so I welcome any further input. 142.166.21.76 15:28, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete for reasons stated, not specific. - TheDaveRoss 15:51, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Keep. We have three cites that refer specifically to Obama and there was, of course, the famous song: “Barack the magic Negro”. At the very least it should be listed as an alternative form to magical Negro, even if we don’t define it as referring to Obama specifically, and then the quotes could be added to magical Negro. Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:56, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

The stock character is not related at all to the Obama sense. The (famous? never heard of it) song appears to not use the term in question, so I am not sure how that is relevant. I can find lots of cites referring to Obama as lots of insults, but that does not create a new sense for each of those insults which is specifically Obama. - TheDaveRoss 13:10, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

The LA Times article that inspired the song that first appeared on Rush Limbaugh’s show used ‘magic negro’ in a way that was similar, perhaps identical, to our definition of magical Negro as it was itself written by a black man who thought that the only reason Obama got the Democratic nomination was because his appearance, attitude and policies were non-threatening and appealing to white liberals. The song was about Obama and set to the tune of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ and is the reason that the phrase ‘magic negro’ became fairly widely used to describe Obama specifically and it’s in that context that ‘magic nigger’ arose as a malphemism. The broadcasting of the song was controversial enough to make global headline news even outside of America (definitely in the U.K.) and several videos of it exist on YouTube, some with a large number of hits. In any case we have the required 3 cites that clearly attest the specific meaning of ‘Obama’, so the entry should be kept. Overlordnat1 (talk) 22:41, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

If we want to change this to be defined as "synonym/alternative form of magical Negro", I'd consider that a satisfactory resolution. That definition makes much more sense than the quite different one originally present on the entry, which was removed after failing RfV. The only problem is that the phrase is not attested outside of these Usenet quotations, which are only using it to refer to Obama, and which don't give enough context to determine for certain what they intended by the term. It could nonetheless be a reasonable guess that they meant "magical Negro".

But just defining this term as "Barack Obama" feels very erroneous. People might describe Russia as a "large country", but that doesn't mean "large country" should be defined in a dictionary as "Russia", because it's just one thing that the words "large country" could be applied to and not the actual meaning of the phrase. Also, if we define "magic n*****" as "Obama", shouldn't it be a proper noun and not have a plural? What would "magic n*****s" even mean? Multiple Barack Obamas? 142.166.21.76 23:03, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Keep new sense without Obama and Delete Obama sense. I looked into this a bit and added a pre-Obama definition with a quote from 1928. Facts707 (talk) 05:58, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

@Facts707: "pre-Obama" is irrelevant- the only challenged sense is specific to Obama. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:57, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: Thanks Chuck - I updated my post to clarify (was going to get back to this but got called away with other duties). Hopefully the generic definition can stay and we can get rid of the Obama sense since the Usenet comments seem to be after it has already been established that they are talking about the former President. Facts707 (talk) 09:58, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Not convinced that the Keene Wallis quotation demonstrates the claimed definition. If anything, I think it's probably intended to be parsed as "magic [n***** laugh]" and not "[magic n*****] laugh", based on what is written on page 660: "and here his laugh comes, resonant and true, that gifted laughter which the nigger owns, magical as his incantation moans". In my reading, the author is saying that the laughter of a Black man is able to enchant/charm those who hear it; when he writes "magic n***** laugh", he is not specifically talking about the laugh of a character who fits the trope of "magical Negro". 142.166.21.76 11:39, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Probably just soft-redirect it as a vulgar form of magical Negro. Ƿidsiþ 06:32, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't see any evidence that the terms are related. - TheDaveRoss 12:37, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete the Obama-specific sense (if not deleted, RFV it since all the quotations under it are just imputing that Obama is a Magic Negro, not using "magic n*gger" to definitionally mean "Obama"). Unless citations clearly support a difference in the generic senses of magic negro vs magic n*gger (I doubt it), let's also soft-redirect the generic sense to magic negro / magical Negro, as Widsith says. - -sche (discuss) 07:03, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

However, calling John Doe "a jackass", for example, does not imply that the word "jackass" should be defined as "(offensive) John Doe". True, but if we get rid of the Obama-specific sense, the quotes that refer to Obama as this term should be moved to a generalized insult sense, because they obviously convey some meaning, whether it be specific to one person or not. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 00:05, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

• Deleted - Obama sense failed RFD, other sense failed RFV. - TheDaveRoss 16:06, 12 October 2022 (UTC)