The Patient Body: Phyllis Schlafly’s Urology
“The Patient Body” is a monthly column by Ann Neumann about issues at the intersection of religion and medicine. This month: Bathrooms, civil rights legislation, and holding it. Continue Reading →
Tag: segregation
In the News – Heathens, Hymns, and Holy Men
A round-up of the week’s religion news. Continue Reading →
Hollywood's Magical Negroes
An excerpt from Roxane Gay’s “The Solace of Preparing Fried Foods and Other Quaint Remembrances from 1960s Mississippi: Thoughts on The Help,” at The Rumpus:
Hollywood has long been enamored with the magical negro—the insertion of a black character into a narrative who bestows upon the protagonist the wisdom they need to move forward in some way or as Matthew Hughey defines the phenomenon in a 2009 article in Social Problems, “The [magical negro] has become a stock character that often appears as a lower class, uneducated black person who possesses supernatural or magical powers. These powers are used to save and transform disheveled, uncultured, lost, or broken whites (almost exclusively white men) into competent, successful, and content people within the context of the American myth of redemption and salvation.” (see: Ghost, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Unbreakable, Robin Hood (1991), The Secret Life of Bees, Sex and the City, The Green Mile, Corinna, Corinna etc.) Continue Reading →
Hollywood’s Magical Negroes
An excerpt from Roxane Gay’s “The Solace of Preparing Fried Foods and Other Quaint Remembrances from 1960s Mississippi: Thoughts on The Help,” at The Rumpus:
Hollywood has long been enamored with the magical negro—the insertion of a black character into a narrative who bestows upon the protagonist the wisdom they need to move forward in some way or as Matthew Hughey defines the phenomenon in a 2009 article in Social Problems, “The [magical negro] has become a stock character that often appears as a lower class, uneducated black person who possesses supernatural or magical powers. These powers are used to save and transform disheveled, uncultured, lost, or broken whites (almost exclusively white men) into competent, successful, and content people within the context of the American myth of redemption and salvation.” (see: Ghost, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Unbreakable, Robin Hood (1991), The Secret Life of Bees, Sex and the City, The Green Mile, Corinna, Corinna etc.) Continue Reading →
Freedom Rides For the Unborn.
A new kind of liberation theology has taken over the “pro-life” movement, with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, Alveda King, at the wheel. Tomorrow in Birmingham, Alabama — “on the site where peaceful civil rights activists were attacked with dogs and water hoses,” as Fr. Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, writes in an email — activists will come together to “work for freedom for the unborn.” Continue Reading →