Giving your baby an unusual moniker may seem like a great idea at the time. But what if you have second thoughts? One mother of a newborn had such bad namer’s remorse, she poured out her heart to strangers online. Speaking of mothers and daughters:...
A jook joint is a roadside establishment where all sorts of drinking, dancing, and gambling may occur. Zora Neale Hurston described them in her 1934 essay “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” and the term probably derives from a West African term...
handkerchief head n.— «New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, told Harold Ickes, “You don’t understand what it’s like. We get called “house Negro” and “handkerchief head” by our constituents because we’re...
mystical magical Negro n.— «Addressing issues ranging from Quentin Tarantino’s gratuitous use of racial epithets to the stereotype of the “mystical magical Negro” who appears in such films as “The Green Mile” and “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” Lee...
magic Negro n. a real or fictional Black person who, especially in deference to White people, is perceived as non-threatening and servile, and appears to have a special ability to help White people. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
magical black man n.— «“Angel Levine” introduces us to another flying Jew, without feathers, this time simply black, a magical black man, Alexander Levine, by name, but by narrational locution, “the Negro.”…Where does such a magical black man come...

