on being magic
I was raised to be/ a nigger you can trust. - from “Magical Negro #607: Gladys Knight on the 200th Episode of The Jeffersons”
The art that moves me makes me feel a little less lonely. Morgan Parker has always been that for me. She has the sharp gaze and language to voice the things I didn’t even know I needed articulated for me. The quote above is from Parker’s most recent poetry collection, Magical Negro. The book references a stock movie trope that isn’t just a movie trope. When you’re in white spaces as an only, white people tend to be comfortable around you. And when they’re comfortable around you, they put their labor on you.
Being a Black woman comes with an expectation of labor that means everyone steps on our necks while simultaneously expecting us to make it better. I’ve thought of a comment one of my favorite content creators made re: the brilliant Amanda Gorman. He was wary of the white women fawning over her and how amazing and articulate and world-changing she is. I observed a similar phenomenon with Stacey Abrams, a persistent woman who, after an election that was likely stolen from her, rallied a team of Black women who ultimately helped turn Georgia blue. It didn’t take long to start seeing the #Abrams2024 hashtag. I don’t believe this country, as a whole, deserves her labor. I don’t think the U.S., as a whole, deserves our labor, even though it would be nothing without us.
With this precedent of whiteness and its dependency on Black women, I’ve reflected on why white people have asked me how they should fix racism. Or asked me to break down, more than once, why they can’t say the n-word. Or probed me to discuss the state of hip hop and Kanye in a way that makes me a spokesperson for the quote unquote Black community. Why I was flooded with DMs after posting an essay I wrote about the exhaustion of trying to exist and learn at a school hostile to Blackness, repeatedly getting told by white former classmates how strong I am, how bad they feel for never taking notice, and thank you for opening their eyes. Like even under all this oppression I’m powerful. I’m going to single-handedly end racism.
I think this ties in with the comfort people have in showing dead Black bodies. If you’re magical it means you’re not real. Except I bleed dark red like everybody else. And so does Morgan. Each time she describes the particularities of existing in white spaces, of pinching herself to see if she’s still Black, I’m reminded of my humanity too. Sometimes it is indeed magic, but only because it’s in opposition to the realities that try to smother me and mine.