bostonreview | Wakanda is a fictional nation in Africa, a marvel beyond all marvels.
Its stupendous wealth and technological advancement reaches beyond
anything the folks in MIT’s labs could dream of. The source of all this
wonder is vibranium, a substance miraculous in ways that the movie does
not bother to explain. But so far as we understand, it is a potent
energy source as well as an unmatched raw material. A meteor rich in
vibranium, which crashed ages ago into the land that would become
Wakanda, made Wakanda so powerful that the terrors of colonialism and
imperialism passed it by. Using technology to hide its good fortune, the
country plays the part of a poor, third-world African nation. In
reality, it thrives, and its isolationist policies protect it from
anti-black racism. The Wakandans understand events in the outside world
and know that they are spared. This triumphant lore—the vibranium and
the Wakandans’ secret history and superiority—are more than imaginative
window-dressing. They go to the heart of the mistaken perception that Black Panther is a movie about black liberation.
We learn that N’Jobu was sent to the United States as one of
Wakanda’s War Dogs, a division of spies that the reclusive nation
dispatches to keep tabs on a world it refuses to engage. This is
precisely N’Jobu’s problem. In the United States, he learns of the
racism black Americans face, including mass incarceration and police
brutality. He soon understands that his people have the power to help
all black people, and he plots to develop weapons using vibranium to
even the odds for black Americans. This is radical stuff; the Black
Panthers (the political party, that is) taken to a level of potentially
revolutionary efficacy. T’Chaka, however, insists N’Jobu has betrayed
the people of Wakanda. He has no intention of helping any black people
anywhere; for him and most Wakandans, it is Wakanda First. N’Jobu
threatens an aide to T’Chaka, who then kills N’Jobu. The murder leaves
Killmonger orphaned. However, Killmonger has learned of Wakanda from
his father, N’Jobu. Living in poverty in Oakland, he grows to become a
deadly soldier to make good on his father’s radical aim to use Wakanda’s
power to liberate black people everywhere, by force if necessary.
By now viewers have two radical imaginings in front of them: an
immensely rich and flourishing advanced African nation that is sealed
off from white colonialism and supremacy; and a few black Wakandans with
a vision of global black solidarity who are determined to use Wakanda’s
privilege to emancipate all black people.
These imaginings could be made to reconcile, but the movie’s director
and writer (with Joe Cole), Ryan Coogler, makes viewers choose.
Killmonger makes his way to Wakanda and challenges T’Challa’s claim to
the throne through traditional rites of combat. Killmonger decisively
defeats T’Challa and moves to ship weapons globally to start the
revolution. In the course of Killmonger’s swift rise to power, however,
Coogler muddies his motivation. Killmonger is the revolutionary willing
to take what he wants by any means necessary, but he lacks any coherent
political philosophy. Rather than the enlightened radical, he comes
across as the black thug from Oakland hell bent on killing for
killing’s sake—indeed, his body is marked with a scar for every kill he
has made. The abundant evidence of his efficacy does not establish
Killmonger as a hero or villain so much as a receptacle for tropes of
inner-city gangsterism.
In the end, all comes down to a contest between T’Challa and
Killmonger that can only be read one way: in a world marked by racism, a
man of African nobility must fight his own blood relative whose goal is
the global liberation of blacks. In a fight that takes a shocking turn,
T’Challa lands a fatal blow to Killmonger, lodging a spear in his
chest. As the movie uplifts the African noble at the expense of the
black American man, every crass principle of modern black respectability
politics is upheld.
In 2018, a world home to both the Movement for Black Lives and a
president who identifies white supremacists as fine people, we are given
a movie about black empowerment where the only redeemed blacks are
African nobles. They safeguard virtue and goodness against the
threat not of white Americans or Europeans, but a black American man,
the most dangerous person in the world.
Even in a comic-book movie, black American men are relegated to the
lowest rung of political regard. So low that the sole white leading
character in the movie, the CIA operative Everett Ross (Martin Freeman),
gets to be a hero who helps save Wakanda. A white man who trades in
secrets and deception is given a better turn than a black man whose
father was murdered by his own family and who is left by family and
nation to languish in poverty. That’s racist.
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