Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of magical negro archetypes in fiction


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. No arguments for deletion aside from the nominator. The issue of merginc can be discussed on the article's talk page. Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:13, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

List of magical negro archetypes in fiction

 * – ( View AfD View log ) •

This almost seems like an attack page in some respects, against Morgan Freeman and Stephen King in particular. Movie critics (who in my opinion often have a very slanted POV and a distorted view of society in general, but they are entitled to their opinion no matter what I think) have a right to say what they want, but that doesn't mean we as Wikipedians have to repeat their conjectures as fact. This is Wikipedia, not Rotten Tomatoes. Stonemason89 (talk) 20:27, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment I also think it's a little hypocritical of Spike Lee to be accusing other filmmakers of being racially offensive, given that he himself directed the infamous School Daze, which uses many racial slurs and stereotypes (Don Imus got fired, if I remember correctly, when he and an assistant repeated some of the slurs from School Daze and applied them to the Rutgers women's basketball team). So I don't think Wikipedia should be endorsing Spike Lee's theories as unquestioned fact. Stonemason89 (talk) 20:27, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


 * It's a common problem, discussed in User:Uncle G/Cargo cult encyclopaedia article writing. The list of examples in magical negro was problematic and overlong.  (There are at least three separate discussions, over four years, on Talk:Magical negro about how editors were just chucking random examples into the article.)  It wasn't really a list of examples.  It was a heap of occurrences being grown in the usual manner.  Rather than dealing with the problem, in situ, the content was subjected to the Wikipedia equivalent of being swept under the rug.  This AFD discussion is the next step in this dance that has been danced umpteen times before over the past better part of a decade. I predict either no consenus thanks to a group of "But they're all individually verifiable!" arguments or a consensus to merge back into magical negro and deal with the problem properly.  That's the usual outcome, too (although  and  were two exceptions).  Uncle G (talk) 20:58, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep meets all the requirements for a list, each entry has a single or multiple references, the actual quote supporting the entry is used, or can be added where missing. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:35, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep - Magical negro is an accepted archetype and a list of magical negro characters, however incomplete as this appears to be, is still a valid Wikipedia article. It just needs some content and formatting work. -- NINTENDUDE 64 02:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Merge to Magical negro. Both articles are a mess. This one is no good, because many of the examples are wrong. For instance, there are ten (!) citations of the reference to an article at an entity called "AV Club". This is not only just a website, but its apparently an arm of The Onion for chrissakes. Not likely a reliable source. And it's wrong. It sounds like the four authors wrote this over beers down at O'Shaugnessey's, throwing in whatever came up, many of which aren't good examples. This is a serious and contentious subject and deserves a decent treatment. It would not be an easy merge. If the closer closes this as a merge, I'm willing to do the work. Herostratus (talk) 04:05, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep No shortage of news coverage using the term "magic negro". Salon gives a detailed bit about it.  Many list examples of this.  Some of these news sources use the Wikipedia to define the term, and quote the items on this list page as examples.  But the article I link to goes into detail about what it means to be a magic negro, and how films use that trope.   D r e a m Focus  19:37, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep considering the reasonably improved state it currently has, . There is too much material to merge: this is a very specific topic, equally relevant to the two very much broader broader topic of negro archetypes in fiction, and magical minority archetypes in fiction. Personally, I think all such articles where there are more than a handful of examples should be kept separate in order to avoid the possibility (or, some would say, likelihood) of messing up the main article with garbage.  That such content in general is appropriate seems to be perfectly obvious, as shown by the 100s or possibly 1000s of academic works discussing various archetypes in fiction.      DGG ( talk ) 21:24, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Merge - per User:Uncle G/Cargo cult encyclopaedia article writing. This article perfectly mirrors the timeline there: between being split out of the main article and the nomination it barely changed. Doing all the work that RAN seems to have done by tagging each bullet point with a source in order to keep the article misses the point: encyclopedic coverage of the magical negro concept would actually be enhanced by merging the important examples, shedding the chaff (Gabriel (Delroy Lindo) in The Simpsons episode "Brawl in the Family" (2002), sourced to tvtropes?) and using the discussion in the proper sources to flesh out the meaning and relevance of this stereotype, its appearances in fiction, and its impact. The merge would result in better encyclopedic coverage – that's why we're here, right? I've looked into the history of Magical negro, and in 1000 edits and over 2.5 years, 20 March 2007 to 26 October 2010 (diff) the article didn't really change: I assume there's a lot of vandalism in there, but that's still a waste of time and effort that I'd like to see rectified. Therefore I would happily help out Herostratus with the merge. There, we're teetering on the edge of diving in, give us a push! Bigger digger (talk) 23:01, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 02:12, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep the concept of "magical negro" is clearly notable and therefore a reasonable list topic. Having said that, I have no objection to an editorial merge as proposed above--I think it's a perfectly reasonable outcome, but not one that needs to be mandated by an AfD close. Jclemens (talk) 04:50, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.