Parents' Guide to The American Society of Magical Negroes

This film wants to say a lot of things, but as hard as it's trying, it doesn't make any point concretely enough to stick. Despite strong performances by Smith, Grier, Bogan, and Tarver—as well as solid turns by great Black actors like Aisha Hinds and Nicole Byer—The American Society of Magical Negroes is sadly too convoluted to make any of its messages truly meaningful. Aren makes a powerful speech at the end of the film, but that speech also highlights one of the film's flaws: shoving in ham-fisted racial discussions. There's too much the film wants to say at once—for example, highlighting the biracial ethnic experience in the United States without actually making a concrete statement on the topic. Writer-director Kobi Libii is biracial himself, yet he doesn't actually make it clear why the "magical Negro" discussion adds layers to the experience of being a biracial Black American.

Another miss is the fundamentally flawed way that the film presents the concept of the "magical Negro" cliché. It's a media trope that filmmakers have historically relied on to help White audiences (and studio heads) feel more comfortable about their historic role in upholding Whiteness as a social construct. A film dissecting this concept is a good idea. But, instead, this movie tries to argue that the "magical Negro" role is one that Black people have filled in real life, which isn't accurate. In doing so, it lightly pokes fun at historical figures like Crispus Attucks and Nancy Green, the model who portrayed Aunt Jemima on pancake product packaging. This feels rude (to say the least), because it positions them as Uncle Tom-like characters—Black people who love to center Whiteness even at their own detriment—which flattens their real experiences, choices, decisions, and very lives. By trying to equate the idea of the "magical Negro" with Black people doing what they had to in order to survive, the film indirectly discounts the way that Black history has been forged by people who not only survived (which sometimes did mean biting your tongue) but also challenged the status quo by rebelling, protesting, marching, and more.