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Wakanda Reveals Our Failure and Our Promise
 Wednesday, February 21, 2018 
(By Jahi Awakoaiye) For a brief moment, we are all as the movie’s villain reveals, a “kid from Oakland believing in fantasies” - sitting transfixed and ushered into a CGI constructed world of Black excellence and beauty. For a time we feel as if, like the Black Panther himself, we are coming home; and the African-American, never with a true country to completely call home, receives a glimpse of what it might feel like to journey back home. But the movie and its director don’t allow us to swim in a sea mixed with kente cloth and gold for too long; soon we are forced to mount our fantasy in a rather uncomfortable frame.
If there were a Wakanda, a place so spectacular, that every country on the planet would pale in comparison to its greatness, than why are we, the projected descendants of this great country, alone in this world without support or protection? Perhaps, we are those motherless children.
Was there a country with the capacity to rescue us from our darkest nights? What Ayi Kwei Armah calls our “seasons wasted wandering amazed along alien roads”, and Dr. Chancellor Williams titled the destruction of Black civilization. While we sank deeper into the abyss, and Black bodies were slung across the Atlantic into capital producing plantations - simply fodder for European capitalistic desires, did our motherland reject our cries? Among the 54 African countries, were none able to extend, if not deliverance, than perhaps just a lifeline? Was our suffering avoidable?
Or were we like the child abandoned on the street and raised by strangers - always left wondering, and asking the perpetual question of the abandoned, “why don’t they love me?”
And then the movie and its director, while knowingly required to produce a film that is entertaining, fashions a movie that ask that very question. If Wakanda choose not to save us, are they equally complicit in our destruction?
For the historians in the audience, the plush seats of AMC become less comfortable, because it is in this moment that Wakanda becomes less fictional and its story, crafted originally by white writers seeking to take advantage of the growing Black identify in the 1960s, becomes perhaps more cruel. Wakanda was not wholly fictional. The earlier rulers of Wakanda chose not to help fellow Africans simply because they were not Wakandians.
The destruction that crippled an entire continent, left it defenseless, robbed it of its future, was only possible because African rulers (most, but not all), were willing to barter trinkets and power for our bodies. Killmonger challenges the leaders of Wakanda for living in comfort while 2 billion Black people suffer in various forms. And in that moment, T’Challa, the king of Wakanda is like many other real rulers, who sat on metric tons of valuable minerals and resources - oil, gas, uranium, cooper, gold, diamonds, while allowing Europeans to rape Africa dry, while their lavish lifestyles were supported. At least in the Marvel Universe, the benefits are procured by all of Wakanda.
Of course these are the simple questions, and the reality is distorted with hundreds of alterations to the question. Since the fall of our last great civilizations we have been unable to build a contemporary to Marvel’s creation. Our children still hold on to fantasies of studying in Ivy league universities and working for Fortune 500 companies. Imagine a world where 13 year olds are sent to Ghana or Nigeria to complete their rites of passage; or where 18 year olds toil over university applications hoping to secure one of the coveted seats at the University of Timbuktu and Harvard is the backup; or billion dollar African companies provide seed money for startups in “little Africas” in places like Oakland and Detroit.
But regardless, I commend the director and dozens of people behind the scenes who brought a vision of African greatness. It will allow young boys to dream of being the Panther, and young girls to see themselves as warriors and technologists, while reminding adults of our duty to fashion a world that calls for our best, and remember as Mary McLeod Bethune said, “The progress of the world will call for the best that all of us have to give”. If Wakanda is just a fantasy, then have we given our best?
The director gives us a glimpse. In the film’s early scene we see a Wakanda spy, who against the Black Panther’s foreign relations policy, has embedded herself in with Nigerian girls abducted by the Boko Haram with plans to free them; and in the movie's opening scene, what appears to be another heist planned by brothers doomed to join the thousands in American prisons, is revealed as a larger plan to fund a rebellion. And we are reminded.
There was no T’Chaka or T’Challa, but there were the Black Panthers, inspired by Malcolm X, attempting to build our communities; a Harriet Tubman transporting enslaved Africans to freedom; a Ngola Nzingha fighting against the Portuguese to take our people away. While our youth can’t study at Timbuktu, they can study at Howard University, Spelman College, or Florida AMU; universities, some struggling, but prepared and dedicated to “uplifting the race”. These ancestors were our superheros, and if we can look past the scars ravaged on us we can see within us the possibility of a real Wakanda.
Dr. Tony Heru Says Feb 28, 2019 Well done Baba Jahi! Thank you for doing what you do. |
William Johnson Says Mar 24, 2018 Right on time, Baba Jahi! For another great piece on Black Panther, see the Study Guide at goo.gl/oJExph Not T’Chaka, no longer at SFSU, but ObaTShaka.com teaches near his Oakland home and online For brighter US-Afrikan futures see: - ImaniVillage.com (Chicago,IL) - EndeleoInstitute.org (Chicago,IL) - CooperationJackson.org (Jackson,MS) - devcolor.org (SF,NYC,DC) |
Baba Charles Says Mar 04, 2018 I hear you baba..Ashe! |
Mama Tyanne Says Mar 03, 2018 Excellent piece Baba Jahi. Ashe! |
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