History Main / MagicalNegro

With such [[CloserToEarth deep spiritual wisdom]] (and sometimes — though not always — actual [[EthnicMagician supernatural powers]]), you might wonder why the Magical Negro doesn't step up and save the day himself. This will never happen. [[IncorruptiblePurePureness So enlightened and selfless is he]] that he [[GoodSamaritan has no desire to gain glory for himself]]; he only wants to help those who need guidance... which ''just happens'' to mean [[WhiteMaleLead those who are traditionally viewed by Hollywood as better suited for protagonist roles]], not, say, his own oppressed people. In fact, the Magical Negro really seems to have no goal in life other than [[TokenBlackFriend helping white people]] achieve their fullest potential; he may even be [[MentorOccupationalHazard ditched or killed outright once he's served that purpose]]. If he does express any selfish desires, it will only be in the context of helping the white protagonists realize their own racism and thereby become better people.

** The ''[[Film/BruceAlmighty Bruce]]/Film/EvanAlmighty'' films, where the main characters are selfish white guys who need his assistance to find wisdom. He's almost literally magical in this case, as he's playing {{God}}.

** The literally magical Vitruvius in ''WesternAnimation/TheLEGOMovie'' serves to play with this trope.

%%* Gloria in '' Literature/BecauseOfWinnDixie'' is a [[TwoferTokenMinority fourfer:]] [[InspirationallyDisadvantaged blind]], black, female, and a dry alcoholic.

* Harlan, Adam's family's old driver in ''Film/{{Adam}}'' seems to have nothing better to do than give him advice, and look bemused, of course.

** Strangest of all is Patrick, who is a Magical ''Irishman.'' He befriends Liz and Spike (the two grimmest girls in the show). Then he teaches them to live and enjoy life again, to a degree where he's like a mild male version of the ManicPixieDreamGirl. The effect -- a boy dressed like a stock Irish laborer from old movies, singing Celtic love songs (which he writes and composes) in a thick brogue -- is hard to describe. We never see him do ''anything'' that doesn't involve helping these girls, and he eventually [[BrotherChuck vanishes without a trace]].

* In the story "Franchise/{{Batman}} R.I.P.", Bruce Wayne is found lost on the street with no memory of who he is, when he comes across a black homeless man named Honor Jackson. Honor helps Bruce start his path to recovery, but then disappears and is revealed to have already been dead. However, while it looks like this trope at first, it's actually a subversion -- it's eventually revealed that Honor is looking for his own personal redemption, saying that he'd never done anything he could be proud of, but was now happy to save one man's life. In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance, Honor Jackson gets a page in the first issue of Morrison's Batman run. Batman gives him a few bucks when the Batmobile is stopped nearby, noting to Robin that there's always time to help people. Honor apparently uses this money to drink himself to death. Arguably the Honor that Bruce met later during Batman R.I.P. was never anything more than a fragment of Bruce's psyche, which raises a few questions about Bruce.

* ''ComicBook/WhatIf ... ComicBook/CaptainAmerica Fought In [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar The Civil War]]?'' reduces ComicBook/TheFalcon to a cross between a Magical Negro and a MagicalNativeAmerican (in this version he was raised by the Shawnee tribe and became a shaman). He gives Steve Rogers a [[WhoopiEpiphanySpeech speech about seeing the similarities in people]], uses his [[ReligionIsMagic mystic abilities]] to give Steve superpowers, and then gets killed.
* In Neil Gaiman's ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' series, the character Maisie Hill in the Game of You story arc (otherwise known as the I-don't-like-dogs-lady) changes one main character's perceptions of "subway people" and literally saves another main character's life with the sacrifice of her own.

* Parodied--or something--in Bill Fitzhugh's ''Pest Control''. Just when the protagonist Bob Dillon ([[RunningGag no relation to]] Music/BobDylan) is at his lowest ebb, with his wife and daughter having left, and he without enough money to so much as buy a nice dinner, he stumbles upon a southern Black woman who runs the Beebe Avenue Mission. While giving him some advice, snark, and soup, she happens to mention that she opened the mission specifically to fix people's broken dreams. Which means she's not there just to help Bob, she's doing her best to help ''everyone''. [[spoiler:At the end of the book, Bob sends her a good portion the money he earned from faking his own assassination. She notes that she can fix a lot of dreams with this.]]

** How Nick Fury is largely portrayed in the films (bonus points for being another Creator/SamuelLJackson example) while also combining this with being the BigGood and BaldBlackLeaderGuy, as despite being the leader of SHIELD, and a badass in his own right, he still leaves the world-saving largely up to the (all white) Avengers, and as time goes on he's seemingly became more of this. PlayedWith at least in that [[RaceLift Fury was white in the original comics]], but there he actually had his own story as the lead character and was more functionally a HeroOfAnotherStory or ReasonableAuthorityFigure.

* A very literal example appears [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment inexplicably]] at the end of Film/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand, [[DeusExMachina rewinding the protagonist's suicide-in-progress and resurrecting his sweetheart]]. All while singing The Beatles' "Get Back".

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* An interesting variation is when a black character gets advice from their mature, future self. They may literally ''be'' magical, as we never learn how the future self appears in the present.
** In a milk commercial [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra6Gm-Xpu7A]], a little girl meets a frowsy, tired woman who says "I'm you from the future". When the girl drinks milk, the woman suddenly becomes an award-winning athlete.
** There's a car commercial where a young man gets a ride from his older self, showing him the type of car he could get. When he drops the younger man off, he says "By the way...your future wife is in there."
** A 2022 commercial for Crypto.com [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KymZ-28tIjc]] takes place in the bedroom of LeBron James in 2003. The present-day LeBron is telling him about the future, but declines to tell him whether he should turn pro.
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* The premise of ''Series/NewAmsterdam'' is that a MightyWhitey saves the life of a MagicalNativeAmerican and in return they use their magic to make him immortal. Naturally, it never occurs to them to make the members of their own tribe immortal, perhaps because the immortal magic only works on superior white genes. However, they only made him immortal until he found his true happiness (BlessedWithSuck?), at which point he'd become mortal again. Since they're not around anymore, the implication is that they were already quite happy the way they were, making it less Magical Negro and more NobleSavage (recovering MagicalNativeAmerican).

* Vadinho from the ''Film/PumaMan'', whose job it is to hand the protagonist the magic belt with the mystical powers of the Puma Man and make him realize his destiny without using these awesome powers for himself, instead becoming the hero's {{sidekick}}. The problem is, the hero is so ineffectual that Vadinho ends up looking like TheHero by comparison and making the film unintentionally subvert the trope.

** How Nick Fury is largely portrayed in the films (bonus points for being another Creator/SamuelLJackson example) while also combining this with being the BigGood and BlackBaldLeaderGuy, as despite being the leader of SHIELD, and a badass in his own right, he still leaves the world-saving largely up to the (all white) Avengers, and as time goes on he's seemingly became more of this. PlayedWith at least in that [[RaceLift Fury was white in the original comics]], but there he actually had his own story as the lead character and was more functionally a HeroOfAnotherStory or ReasonableAuthorityFigure.

* Creator/StephenKing seems to have issues on this subject; many of his writings and their [[TheFilmOfTheBook film adaptations]] include examples of this trope. To be fair to King, he does acknowledge his tendency to write characters such as Dick Hallorann and Mother Abigail as superblack heroes (his words) and says they are products of his white liberal guilt.

* ''Series/TheIrregulars'': The Linen Man rescues Jessica from the Plague Doctor with a magical cloud of butterflies, explains what she is and why she is seeing things, and advises her on how to figure out what is going on. But he can't solve her problems directly as Jessica is in London and he is physically in Louisiana. [[spoiler: Brutally subverted when he shows up in London for real and starts killing people.]]

** ''Literature/{{Dreamcatcher}}'': Duddits is a white, saintly brain-damaged kid.
** Magic, mentally disabled guys are arguably a ''literal'' trope in themselves with Stephen King. They seem to have special immunity to dark magic and what-not.

** ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'': Sheemie Ruiz, the slightly retarded [[spoiler: psychic and teleporter]]. Avoided, however, with Susannah, who is black and disabled, but also a fully-rounded, three-dimensional character with no mysterious powers.

** When asked by Magazine/{{Playboy}} why he/Hollywood does that, King replied, "white liberal guilt."

** ''Literature/TheStand'': Mother Abigail, elderly and black; Nick Andros, deaf-mute; Tom Cullen, mentally disabled. Abigail is arguably an aversion, since she's the single most powerful person in Boulder. Also averted in that we spend quite a lot of time inside Mother Abigail's head, and her self-doubt complicates the situation for the heroes in the second act. Joe, a twelve-to-fourteen-year old who, due to trauma, regressed into a non-speaking, sometimes violent savage. Larry at one point realizes that Joe is ''reading his mind''.

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* In ''Webcomic/{{Sinfest}}'', [[http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2007-11-12 Slick knows to consult one.]]
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* The title character in Bernard Malamud's short story "The Angel Levine" is an early (and very blatant) example.
* ''The Cay,'' by Theodore Taylor, features an old black man who rescues a racist white boy who had become blinded when their ship sinks. The two live together in a tropical island and the black man lives long enough to make the boy a better person before [[DeathByNewberyMedal dying in a hurricane.]] The book won a number of awards before suffering a backlash due to accusations of racism. Nonetheless it remains a classic children's book.

** This is a parody though, he tells Robin that he couldn't be bothered to remember their names and implies that however poetically he may have pretended to phrase it for them, he was leaving because he was bored.

** However, while Guinan fits the trope closely enough to be a definite example, she's also a little more complex than most Magical Negroes -- it's strongly implied that she led her own long life of adventure and heroism before settling down as a bartender, and on rare occasions she does realize she was wrong about something instead of being mysteriously right all the time.

* Rose on ''Series/{{Lost}}'' consistently dispenses sensible, down-to-earth wisdom. She leads Charlie in prayer after his DisneyDeath. She mystically "knows" her husband is alive elsewhere on the island. In general, if she believes a character is good, she's correct.
** However, Rose later grew a bit, becoming a character in her own right in season 2 with a back story and her own side plot. And by season 4, she's actively snarking at Jack. And then she decides to [[spoiler:just give up and just live in "retirement" with Bernard]].

** Locke initially seems to fit the role of a strange white version of a Magical Negro, possessing mystical, almost shamanistic knowledge and a deep, unexplained communion with the island, always ready to dispense nice bits of pop-wisdom and jungle smarts... that is, until later in the series when he goes from subservient shaman spirit-guide to full-blown [[MessianicArchetype Messiah]]. And then crazy person/gullible dupe, responsible for much ill-advised StuffBlowingUp.

* Averted in ''Series/{{Oz}}''. While Kareem Said is a brilliant leader and fiercely intelligent, he deals with many of his own problems. Character depth also prevents him from just being a cliche. His friendship with Tobias Beecher is also more destructive in a sense than helpful.