Blind Black Guy

"Granddad: You ran into our car! Are you blind?!

Stinkmeaner: YES... I... am! So?

Granddad: Wait, you're blind?

Stinkmeaner: Yes! Blind! You got a problem with that, nyuggah?"

- The Boondocks, "Granddad's Fight"

A very common form of Twofer Token Minority is the blind black guy. He's blind, and he's black. May wear Cool Shades. Frequently overlaps with Magical Negro. The characters are more often than not a Ray Charles parody, and tend to be a Blind Musician as well.

Advertising

 * Subverted and played straight in this Levi's commercial.

Anime & Manga

 * Tousen from Bleach. Unusually for this trope, he turns out to be a villain..
 * Another villainous example from Heat Guy J. One of the Mafia Elite is this. (Complete with playing the piano while laughing maniacally at the thought of )

Film

 * The Blind Seer in O Brother, Where Art Thou??.
 * The "Three Blind Mice" in the opening sequence of Dr. No. Unfortunately for the local British Secret Service agent, they were just faking blindness so they could shoot him in the back.
 * Richard Pryor's character in See No Evil, Hear No Evil.
 * In The Book of Eli, we have
 * In Get Crazy we meet a B.B. King expy at a fellow blues man's funeral - all the other blues men in attendance are blind, throwing flowers, well, blindly...one of them walks into an open grave.
 * Morgan Freeman's character in Unleashed.
 * The man with the black eyepatch in Blindness
 * The owner of "The Beast" in The Sandlot.
 * News stand owner Jeb in Maniac Cop 2.
 * Jerome from My Soul to Take.
 * A rare One-Scene Wonder example appears in Philadelphia, unless he just wears shades.
 * Abdul Elijah, the Dark Messiah leader of The Cleanheads in Red Heat.

Live Action TV

 * Jake from Becker
 * Geordi on Star Trek: The Next Generation
 * The Rutles had retired New Orleans bluesman Blind Lemon Pie, who claimed to have invented The Rutles' music, although his wife retorted that he only made this and similar claims for the benefit of TV documentary crews.
 * One episode of Jonathan Creek had a black guy who pretended to be blind to get sympathy or whatever. He got his comeuppance when a fat, elderly lady undressed in front of him and he couldn't admit being squicked by her appearance.
 * He had been blind, but surgery restored his vision perfectly. But he kept that secret to avoid spoiling his shtick.
 * In one episode of Seven Days, Frank became a "ghost" due to a time-traveling accident, and a Blind Black Guy was the only one who could hear him speak.
 * One Chappelle's Show sketch featured the eponymous comedian playing Clayton Bigsby, a blind black man who, unaware of his own race, became a white supremacist.
 * Parodied in The Sarah Silverman Program where in one episode Sarah sits in a rocking chair surrounded by black musicians as she speaks in ebonics after going temporarily blind in a tanning salon.
 * Parodied on The Mighty Boosh - Lester Corncrake is a blind white guy who fully believes himself to be black. Everyone's just too polite to tell him otherwise as he seems quite invested in the idea.
 * Female version on Early Edition with Marissa, who at times also acts as voice of reason to other castmates.
 * In Signs and Wonders, Diamond the "deprogrammer" (James Earl Jones) briefly disguises himself as a blind beggar.
 * Andre from Ninja Turtles the Next Mutation.

Music

 * The Blind Boys of Alabama.
 * Music examples: Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and any Blues Man with "Blind" in his name.

Webcomics

 * Reggie from Pv P
 * The Order of the Stick has Blind Pete appearing in Greysky City previously Eagle Eyed Pete, before a run in with the local Thieves' Guild.

Web Original

 * Jericho in the Whateley Universe.

Western Animation
"BG: I learned at the feet of Blind Willie Witherspoon.
 * The blind black Jazz (blues?) player neighbor who lives in a swamp shows up in a Cow and Chicken episode.
 * The master of Blues is set up to be one in another episode, but to nobody's big surprise, it turned out to be the Red Guy. But THEN it turned out that he was an impostor, and the real master of Blues IS an actual Ray Charles lookalike.
 * Subverted on The Simpsons with Bleeding Gums Murphy (Lisa's saxophone mentor who died). Even though Bleeding Gums Murphy wore sunglasses (even at night), he (ostensibly) had perfect vision. He was based on Blind Willie Witherspoon, who was blind, and Murphy learned his craft from Witherspoon.

flash to younger BG in a bar

Willie: I've been playing jazz for 30 years and I just can't make a go of it. I want you to have my saxophone.

BG: This isn't a saxophone; it's an umbrella!

Willie: So I've been playing an umbrella for 30 years? Why didn't anybody tell me?

BG: Heh, we all thought it was funny. chuckles

Willie: That's not funny."


 * Col. Stinkmeaner from The Boondocks
 * On Gargoyles, Hudson manages to befriend one named Jeffrey Robbins.
 * Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends had one episode focusing around a "seeing-eye friend" trying to find his kid, who was blind and black- and, of course, named Stevie.
 * The "Toby Danger" cartoon in Freakazoid had a brief gag where a dead ringer for Ray Charles continued performing oblivious to the power being cut.
 * Joan of Arc's foster father in Clone High.