I like this article, with one exception. It credits Killmonger for completely changing T'Challa's mind, but it doesn't acknowledge that Nakia was already working on him. Both Nakia and Killmonger were two sides of the same coins. One was more extreme, but they both disagreed with T'Challa and Wakandans about their isolationist stance. Good piece though.
The Tragedy of Erik Killmonger
That piece dope.
“The sun will never set on the Wakandan empire,” Killmonger declares, echoing an old saying about the British Empire, to drive the point home as clearly as possible. He sees no future beyond his own reign; he burns the magic herbs Wakandan monarchs use to gain their powers because he does not even intend to have an heir.
Killmonger’s plan for “black liberation,” arming insurgencies all over the world, is an American policy that has backfired and led to unforeseen disasters perhaps every single time it has been deployed; it is somewhat bizarre to see people endorse a comic-book version of George W. Bush’s foreign policy and sign up for the
Project for the New Wakandan Centuryas long as the words “black liberation” are used instead of “democracy promotion.” Killmonger’s assault begins in London, New York, and
Hong Kong; China is not typically known as a particularly good example of white Western hegemony in need of overthrow.
“You want to see us become just like the people you hate so much,” T’Challa tells Killmonger during their climactic battle. “I learn from my enemies,” Killmonger retorts. “You have become them,” T’Challa responds.
The following distinction is crucial: Black Panther does not render a verdict that violence is an unacceptable tool of black liberation—to the contrary, that is precisely how Wakanda is liberated. It renders a verdict on imperialism as a tool of black liberation, to say that the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house.
This is the shyt I been saying forever. What's the point of defeating the enemy if you just become the enemy? Do you WANT the minds and hearts and lives of Imperialists? Then why make yourself like them?
And assuming it all just gonna run fine was naive anyway. Besides the full military might of America and China and Britain and all their secret war tools in the Marvel Universe, ain't there like 20+ Avengers out there too? Tony Stark/Iron Man and the rest just gonna let Wakanda do what they want? Under Killmonger's plan the world is about to burn to the ground, and Wakanda was going to burn with it before it all said and done.
Look at how many people (especially the online militants) don't want to do real shyt to disrupt the system if it costs them their current lives. I ain't justifying that. But in the flick you have a GOOD nation where Black people living well, and some folk think they should all just give that up and start World War 3, losing their good lives and families in the process, to end up in a world where NO ONE is living well. That's what neoconservatism/neoliberalism creates, the endless war in order to win, at best, a violent hegemony where no one is safe.
Christopher Lebron's article pissed me off because in addition to the numerous factual errors, he just plain seemed to miss what the entire moral dilemma of the film was about. It wasn't a condemnation of the Black experience, it had nothing to do with Black street gangs, it was a condemnation of the tools of White Imperialism and he completely missed that. For a professor, that's disappointing.
