Did "Black Panther" demonize black americans?

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ahdsend

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‘Black Panther’ Is Not the Movie We Deserve

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.
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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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The offenses don’t end, though. If one surveys the Marvel cinematic universe, one finds that the main villains—even those far more destructive than Killmonger—die infrequently. They are formidable enemies who live to challenge the hero again and again. A particularly poignant example is Loki, brother to Thor, the God of Thunder. Across the Thor and Avengers movies that feature him, Loki is single-handedly responsible for incalculable misery and damage; his power play leads to an alien invasion that nearly levels all of Manhattan. Yet Thor cannot seem to manage any more violence against Loki than slapping him around a bit and allowing other heroes to do the same—even as Loki tries to kill Thor. Loki even gets his turn to be a good guy in the recent Thor: Ragnarok. Loki gets multiple, unearned chances to redeem himself no matter what damage he has done. Killmonger, however, will not appear in another movie. He does not get a second chance. His black life did not matter even in a world of flying cars and miracle medicine. Why? Perhaps Killmonger’s main dream to free black people everywhere decisively earns him the fate of death. We know from previous Marvel movies that Killmonger’s desire for revenge is not the necessary condition to eliminate him; Loki’s seeming permanence is proof.

My claim that Killmonger’s black life does not matter is not hyperbole. In a macabre scene meant to be touching, Black Panther carries Killmonger to a plateau so that he might see the sun set on Wakanda before dying. With a spear stuck in his chest, he fulfills his wish to appreciate the splendor his father described, when Wakanda seemed a fairy tale. T’Challa offers Wakanda’s technology to save Killmonger’s life—it has saved the white CIA agent earlier in the film. But Killmonger recalls his slave heritage and tells Panther he’d rather die than live in bondage. He knows the score. He knows that Panther will incarcerate him (as is disproportionately common for black American men). The silence that follows seems to last an eternity. Here is the chance for the movie to undo its racist sins: T’Challa can be the good person he desires to be. He can understand that Killmonger is in part the product of American racism and T’Chaka’s cruelty. T’Challa can realize that Wakanda has been hoarding resources and come to an understanding with Killmonger that justice may require violence, if as a last resort. After all, what else do comic-book heroes do but dispense justice with their armored fists and laser rifles? Black Panther does not flinch. There is no reconciliation. Killmonger yanks the spear out of his chest and dies. The sun sets on his body as it did on Michael Brown’s.
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Black Panther is not the movie we deserve. My president already despises me. Why should I accept the idea of black American disposability from a man in a suit, whose name is synonymous with radical uplift but whose actions question the very notion that black lives matter?
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Standing on business

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..::..::.. said:
Killmonger was the star to me
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Aimé

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for real for real bredren
and im speaking at my american fam..
yes the research you and countless others have done is well documented in books/ universities etc..
yes brother malcolm, the bpp, and black american culture is yours..
but seriously..
stop this shyt.. You. Are. Not. The. Epicenter. Of. Black. African. Culture.
I get it..
Killmonger portrays the black american experience.. but some of yall are taking this too far..
 
ORDER_66

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:mindblown: Why does everyone keep saying that same shyt like Killmonger's plans was destroyed by the wakandans in black on black crime with the white man stopping the liberation of the black people?!? :dahell:

Dude was willing to start WW3 with those weapons with sleeper cells of black wakandan operatives... :dahell: It wouldn't have been a good look to do that shyt...

You only make yourself look like your oppressors doing that shyt. T'challa was telling him your too angry, your anger is driving you to madness... And even though I releate there's a line that we can't cross...

Don't get me wrong I love Killmonger for his burn it all type shyt, I think we all have those MAGNETO-like thoughts in our heads if we was in that position... But then most of us would be good and realize maybe we can change the world in other ways... WW3 would gain us nothing...

The story whether or not to be a hero or a anti-hero villain was incredible the dichotomy was excellent. People not seeing the bigger picture.
 
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