ABOVE PHOTO: From left, Justice Smith stars as “Aren” and David Alan Grier stars as “Roger” in writer/director Kobi Libii’s “The American Society of Magical Negroes”, a Focus Features release.
By Kharisma McIlwaine
“The American Society of Magical Negroes” has received its fair share of backlash since its release. The controversy surrounding the film centers around the disappointment in finding out the magic that the Black people are using is to benefit and uphold the construct of whiteness.
Black people with magical powers are not living the “Harry Potter” life. Instead, they are tasked with assuaging white guilt and preventing white tears from ever falling at the expense of their own wants, needs and desires.
What I think many are missing, however, is the lens of satire that the film is written through. The film intentionally points to how whiteness is upheld and how Black people are expected to bow to it to their own detriment. Justice Smith plays the main character Aren, a yarn sculptor. Smith spoke with the SUN about what the overall message of the film means to him personally.
Smith was raised in Orange County, California, a predominantly white area. His upbringing largely shaped how he showed up in the world.
“I saw myself in it,” Smith said. “I saw my individual racial experience in it. I grew up in a very white homogenous environment. I, like Kobi, also made a lot of unnecessary compromises about my identity to survive socially in those environments. It was only after I left that community that I was able to liberate myself from that. When I read the script, I was like, ‘I wish I had a film like this when I was younger.’ I feel like it would’ve helped me on that liberation process.”
Assimilation for many of us becomes a means of survival. That dynamic is exacerbated in Hollywood.
“They create pop culture, so a lot of our stereotypes have unfortunately come from Hollywood,” Smith explained. “It is a little bit of a “chicken or the egg” thing, because these stereotypes and archetypes [already] existed in society and then Hollywood reflected it back to us. Or it was vice versa? But it takes a strong individuality to navigate the industry. You really have to know who you are to not be stereotyped. I read a lot of roles where I had to have conversations with writers and directors about the representation of the character they expect me to play and what it might subconsciously be saying by writing that character as a white writer. When I first started out I didn’t have as much of a voice.”
Black people are not a monolith, and our stories deserve to be told without being filtered through the lens of stereotypes. That being said, Black people are not always represented in spaces that have been deemed as white majority spaces. Smith’s character Aren fights against that notion simply by existing and enjoying what he likes — like yarn sculpting.
“I understood his complexity,” Smith said. “The vicious cycle of I feel so uncomfortable in this environment so I’m going to appease and appeal in order to mitigate that discomfort, but in doing that I am permitting them to disrespect me further which then creates more discomfort. I understood that vicious cycle. I understood the nuances of that compromise and self-denial that you have to adopt in order to continue that cycle. “But with the yarn sculpting, I learned how to knit, which was super fun. It really centers me; I highly recommend it.”
Often when we think of racism, we think of some of the more blatant, traumatic experiences. Many of us try to suppress those experiences in order to avoid carrying the burden of that pain every day. The microaggressions we experience daily, however, are equally as painful.
“I loved the scene with me and Lizzie (An-Li Bogan) in the car after we’re in a bar with our white co-worker,” Smith said. “He says something microaggressive out of ignorance, and we both try to make him feel better. Then we have to unpack why we did that. It was an experience that I know too well. It’s something that me and my friends have done, where we leave a white environment and we kind of have to shed our skin, lick each other’s wounds and take care of each other.”
“White people aren’t doing that,” Smith continued. “White people aren’t leaving those spaces going, ‘Hmm — was I racist or microaggressive in any way? Did I compromise myself in any way?’ People of color often have to show up for each other and help each other get through white supremacy. People of color all the time are put at that fork in the road of when to pick our battles. The times where we’ve had to swallow it and go home and apologize to your skin and take care of your inner child for these microaggressions, and to me that’s a violent act. It’s 1,000 little cuts. It hurts and it requires so much healing that we have to do.”
The weight and brunt of educating our white counterparts about their racism, known and unknown, falls on the shoulders of Black people and people of color — despite the fact that it’s not our responsibility.
“It’s really challenging to be a human being in general — to find meaning in your life, to find purpose, to see the bigger picture,” Smith said. “People of color have this added challenge of having to unpack the entire history of race, because it lives within our bodies, in addition to trying to figure out what it means to exist. I always try to paint that inequity. White people kind of just get to ponder those larger life questions, and that’s all while we have so many extra steps before we get there.”
Smith spoke about how this film in many ways emboldened him to address some of these issues head on, in real time.
“When I started the movie I was, like, ‘I’m already good. I’m doing this for a younger version of myself.’ Doing the movie, I noticed all the small ways that I still compromise myself and make myself small in order to make other people comfortable. Part of it is that I’m trying to rid myself of people pleaser habits. Unfortunately, because I’m a Black person, it gets complicated when I think I’m being a people pleaser, but I’m actually allowing someone to disrespect me, when I’m feeding into the expectation of what my place is in society. It’s a difficult thing to navigate. I would say for the most part, I’m more confident. This entire press tour has been so fun and cathartic, because I really love talking about race. To be able to do it on a public scale, to be candid and frank about race and engage in meaningful conversations with other people about race, I feel like I’m being the most authentic I’ve ever been. That’s really freeing.”
The ‘safe Black person’ and the ‘magical negro’ tropes both operate within the parameters of what whiteness dictates we have to be in order to be accepted. The ugly truth is assimilation will never garner a seat at a table with people who have never believed you deserved a seat at any table, let alone theirs. Our freedom to exist fully is tied to us showing up as our authentic selves and can never be achieved by bending our will and consciousness to be accepted.
Whether you appreciate the execution of the overall message of “The American Society of Magical Negroes” or not, this film is a conduit for some very necessary conversations surrounding race and what we need to do as a collective to continue striving for the change we want to see in our society.
“The American Society of Magical Negroes” is playing theaters nationwide.
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