High above the ocean stands a pair of superhuman rulers: the Black Panther, sovereign and protector of the African nation of Wakanda, and K’uk’ulkan (“Namor” to his enemies), warrior-king of the underwater city of Talokan. Below the two, atop a tilting ship, their respective armies battle to the death, tossing spears and arrows, bombs, lasers, and each other across the deck and over the water. It’s a display of skill, technological marvel, and most importantly, undying loyalty to their people. As these two nations of color converge on one another in the exciting climax of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) one may be left asking the question: Where all the white people at?
That is, where are the threats to each nation, to whom we are introduced earlier in the film: the police, the neocolonialists, the government spies? Were they not the real enemies of the people? Why had a film — a franchise — about the most powerful people of color (POC) on the planet so often pitted those people against each other, rather than against their mutual foes?
Despite the loss of franchise star Chadwick Boseman, the anticipated sequel to 2018’s Black Panther delivers much of what made the original film successful: impassioned performances, lavish costumes, lush sets, epic fight choreography, and a sexy, scene-stealing antagonist. The film also doubles down on the ideological message offered by its predecessor: that humility and grace are preferable to anger and resentment. It’s a particularly loaded sentiment when applied to historically oppressed and marginalized people. Despite the righteous violence we find in most action films, including those of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s notable that the studio’s most prominent Black characters are seemingly always expected to forgive, and to keep their cool above all else, no matter how justified their anger. And it can’t be overlooked that this is the prevailing theme in not just one, but both of the franchise’s feature films. In fact, these behavioral expectations placed on POC are part of a larger tradition in the US — particularly in the realm of activism — in which we celebrate passive protest of POC whilst deriding displays of their rage, particularly when leveled at white oppressors.
The kingdom of Wakanda operates as an Afrofuturist fantasy, displaying speculative science-fiction elements through a distinctly, deliberately Black cultural lens. Afrofuturism offers a portrait of who Black people are and a promise of who they could be, if only they were free from the social, historical, and technological limitations of their day. As such, in Wakanda, the Black Panther franchise delivers a vision of an Africa safe from the exploitation of European colonialism; one that has become — in the words of Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) — “the most powerful nation in the world,” having been free to take advantage of their own natural resources, rather than relinquishing them to the rapacious West. And they’ve succeeded in doing so without sacrificing the totems of their indigenous culture: their own language, attire, customs, and gods. Wakanda is the answer to the question, “What if ‘things’ didn’t ‘fall apart’”?
In Wakanda Forever, we’re introduced to another paradise found: Talokan, whose language, structures, clothing, and art represent the Mayan civilization of their ancestors, which, on the surface world, long ago fell to Spanish conquest. Like Wakanada, Talokan thrives off its bountiful reserves of vibranium, the strongest known metal on Earth. And as with its African counterpart, the key to Talokan’s power has been the ability to hide its resources and its people from the outside world, from the disease and suffering that plagued 16th century Mesoamerica, courtesy of Spanish Conquistadors. This is all to say that the Black Panther franchise is not only multicultural in terms of its casting and overall aesthetic; the race of its characters is more than a nod to “diversity.” The shared conflict driving both films is born out of the history of Black and Indigenous people, and their encounters with Western expansion. Both films acknowledge the profound impact of European colonialism and the resulting conditions of POC, past and present.
Indeed, the first film centers on the lasting effects of that history on contemporary Black America, in the form of urban decay, federal targeting, and criminal justice abuses. As the Wakandan prince, N’Jobu (Sterling K. Brown), observes, Black American “leaders have been assassinated, [their] communities flooded with drugs and weapons. They are overly policed and incarcerated.” What’s key about N’Jobu’s assessment is his intended solution to alleviate these concerns, and those of the global Black community, who “don’t have the tools to fight back” against their oppressors. “With vibranium weapons,” he says, “they could overthrow every country and Wakanda could rule them all. The right way.” N’Jobu is later said to have been “radicalized” by the hardships he saw in America. And for his aggressive response, he is swiftly killed by N’Chaka (John Kani), his own brother and then-king of Wakanda. Neither Black Panther nor Wakanda Forever denies the existence of sociopolitical threats to Black life and prosperity; rather, the debate at the heart of the franchise is the appropriate response of historically marginalized people to the circumstances surrounding their own marginalization. Further, each film appears to suggest that the “proper” response to oppression is ultimately determined by the emotional response of the oppressed. As such, ideologically, the Black Panther franchise finds itself part of a long history of policing the behavior of Black people, ostensibly at the expense of addressing their needs.
A refrain throughout Wakanda Forever is that “the how is not as important as the why.” But that hasn’t necessarily proven true of activism in the US, particularly on behalf of POC. At the turn of the 20th century, Booker T. Washington, renowned Black leader and educator, and founder of Tuskegee University, promoted racial reconciliation between Black and white people, and the need for economic opportunities for the burgeoning Black population in the US. In his noted 1895 address to the Atlanta Exposition — where he was introduced before a largely white audience as “a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization” — Washington argued that Black people would do well to forgo their call for immediate social and political advancement, and instead seek out increased industrial and agricultural job training. He goes on to promise that, in exchange for these opportunities, White Americans “will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law–abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen.” By contrast, the socialist scholar and Black activist, W.E.B. Dubois insisted that political power, civil rights, and “higher education,” were paramount if Black people were expected to prosper in the US, and that Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise,” as he called it, impeded Black progress and encouraged “a silent submission to civic inferiority.”
We see similar conflicts years later among other prominent Black civil rights advocates. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s pacifist philosophy of “nonviolence” countered the confrontational call for “Black Power” coming from his contemporary and ally, Stokely Carmichael (aka Kwame Ture). Even the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense — the fraught, complicated paramilitary group for whom Marvel’s Black Panther is named — oscillated between community enrichment programs and plotting government overthrow, depending on its leadership at any given point. Far from a monolith, the Black community represents diverse thought with regard to the station of its members, in terms of both the diagnosis as well as the proposed remedy for improving that station. Unfortunately, that diversity can take the form of a competitive ideological schism, particularly in spaces where Black representation is historically limited — from the political arena to the MCU. In the scramble to save the community, the shape and approach of advocacy may come to serve as a reflection — even an indictment — of the character and true intent of the advocate.
In his 1963 speech, “Message to the Grassroots,” civil rights icon Malcolm X further breaks down the schism, and the damage it can do, and has done, to Black liberation efforts. He likens the US to a plantation run by white “masters,” and paints the picture of two types of slaves (that is, two types of Black people) inhabiting that plantation: the “Field Negro,” the laborer who “caught hell,” “lived in a shack,” and “hated his master”; and the “House Negro,” the domestic servant who “dressed pretty good” and “loved their master more than the master loved himself.” According to Malcolm, this hatred for the “master” is a sign of the Field Negro’s intelligence, for unlike the House Negro, he recognizes the true relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed, with no conciliatory delusions. According to Malcolm, the Field Negro’s prime objective is escape from the plantation — that is, his liberation and that of his people. The real threat of the House Negro is that he functions as an impediment to that liberation; the job of this “Uncle Tom” is to keep his more rebellious brethern in check, to “keep us under control,” Malcolm says, “keep us passive and peaceful and nonviolent.”
This is not to reduce the people of Wakanda to mere “House Negroes.” None of them exhibits the obsequiousness or the self-loathing that are often associated with this caricature; Wakanda is expressly presented as an independent Black nation, and a symbol of afrocentric pride, unity, and strength. That said, the ideological schism is on full display in Black Panther (and reinforced in Wakanda Forever — expanded in the sequel to include all colonized people of color, not just those of African descent). We meet Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), N’Jobu’s son — a lost son of Wakanda raised in the US. Upon his return, he calls out a dynamic similarly observed by Malcolm X: “Y’all [in Wakanda] sittin’ up here comfortable. It must feel good. It’s about two billion people all over the world that look just like us. But their lives are a lot harder.” There can be little doubt that Killmonger himself — with his combat swagger and appetite for power, and his fierce resentment toward the enemies of Black people — draws on the Field Negro trope. His last living words — “Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships, cause they knew death was better than bondage” — allude to Malcolm’s distinction between fighting for pride and settling for peace. And because Killmonger is positioned as Black Panther’s primary antagonist, and his ideology so opposed to that expoused by Wakanda, we could say that, as with Malcolm’s House Negro, the Black Panther franchise concerns itself with discrediting aggressive action on behalf of the oppressed.
We see this play out in Black Panther, in the contrast between cousins Killmonger and King T’Challa (Boseman). T’Challa claims that “waging war on the world” has never been how Wakanda deals with its enemies. “It is not our way to be judge, jury, and executioner for people who are not our own,” he says. Killmonger, however, a former American black-ops soldier, has learned from his enemies. “Beat them at their own game,” he says. Like his father, N’Jobu, Killmonger’s plan is to use Wakanda’s vibranium weapons to “arm oppressed people all over the world, so they can finally rise up and kill those in power.” And while T’Challa and a counsel of elders debate the fate of Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis), an Afrikaner black market arms dealer guilty of stealing vibranium, Killmonger takes the thief out himself and drops the body onto Wakanda’s doorstep. T’Challa would have done so himself, had he not not been stopped by his partner Nakia (Lupita N’yongo); “The world watches,” she warns him, his claws hovering over a fallen Klaue before a crowd of spectators and cameras. The perceived victory in that moment, and by the end of the film, is that T’Challa proves himself the type of king — the type of Black leader — who, unlike Killmonger, chooses grace over anger, patience over revenge.
Wakanda Forever picks up that theme and carries it to the same conclusion. Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejia) — or, “El Nino Sin Amor,” so named because he has “no love for the surface world” — is similar to Killmonger: brooding, bitter, confrontational, and cold, though unlike Killmonger, has the support of an entire kingdom. Namor, who has been alive for centuries, has seen first hand what the Spanish did to the Maya, and knows just how to neutralize usurpers. So when the surface world discovers Talokan’s resources, and the Talokanii are faced with the same threat as their Maya ancestors, they, under Namor’s command, openly and fatally attack vibranium miners with no interest in brokering peace, or fear for how they’ll appear in the public eye. As in Black Panther, this more aggressive approach is ultimately dissuaded, as Namor is depicted as charismatic, but erratic; his people noble, but deadly; his worldview tempting, but dangerously flawed.
We are once again presented with a new ruler of Wakanda — this time, T’Challa’s sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright) — who must decide the type of leader (and, in turn, the type of person) she wants to be. And as with T’Challa, Shuri’s journey demands that she contend with, and then denounce, the more “radical” examples set by others among her. So when Killmonger appears to Shuri in a vision, and challenges, “Are you going to be noble like your brother, or are you going to take care of business like me?” we are meant to hope she decides the former. We, like Shuri, are expected to reject Namor’s — and once again, Killmonger’s — aggressive approach. And we are asked to applaud when she affords Namor mercy in their final 1-on-1 battle. “Vengeance has consumed us,” she tells him, “We cannot let it consume our people.” Vengeance, it seems, represents the wrong side of the ideological schism. That’s all well and good; grace is a fine virtue. But when it comes to alleviating the conditions of traditionally marginalized people, is there a danger in focusing too much on the temperment of the oppressed, and not enough on the actions of the oppressor?
At this point in the franchise, there has arguably been no discernible change in these conditions. The CIA, historically a threat to Black America — here, represented by the adorably innocuous Martin Freeman — continues to operate with impunity, targeting Wakanda for its vibranium reserves. The social injustices facing Black Americans, tearfully described by N’Jobu in the first film, are all but forgotten by the second. The sequel opens with Wakanda Outreach Centers under attack, and Europe at it again, plotting to rob nations of color for their resources; by the end, however, the danger imposed by interlopers is far from the center of the film’s major conflict, which instead focuses on these nations of color fighting among themselves. Indeed, when given a spot on the world stage at the conclusion of Black Panther (as “a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization”), rather than calling truth to power, or unequivocally displaying his own — in the name of protecting Wakanda’s diasporic, marginalized kin — T’Challa promises that his people “will work to be an example of how we as brothers and sisters on this earth should treat each other.” He goes on to say that “We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” This statement, this entire moment, is particularly reminiscent of Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise,” in that we find a prominent Black leader diminishing the damage done to his people in the name of building bridges and keeping the peace. Once again, we see the character of POC placed under the microscope in the name of acceptance — in order to assuage the fears of those who may inflict harm on them. (But as Stokely Carmichael said in 1966, in response to MLK’s activist philosophy, “No one is asking the white community in the South to be ‘nonviolent.’”) What is the use in being “the most powerful nation in the world” if you are hesitant to exercise that power to its fullest, especially on behalf of your people?
But perhaps restraint is the point, though not out of any particular affinity for the “master”; the opposite, in fact. Perhaps aggressors like Killmonger and Namor, despite their community pride, come to represent the threat of the oppressor as much as the potential of the oppressed. After all, neither men simply want a space at the table; they want to clear the table completely. Namor intends to conquer the world and watch it burn at his hands. While Killmonger wants to eradicate those who subjugate Black people, as well as “their children, and anyone else who takes their side,” his goal isn’t equality, but rather supremacy, using vibranium weapons to expand his nation’s power. “The sun will never set on the Wakandan Empire,” he declares after claiming the throne, adopting an adage popularized by colonial Great Britain. T’Challa calls him out: “You want to see us become just like the people you hate so much. Divide and conquer the land as they did!” What makes Killmonger and Namor dangerous is their desire to supplant the role of the oppressor, to become the “master” of just another exploitative system. Though they fit the Field Negro trope in many ways, they are seemingly just as motivated by the trappings of white power as the so-called House Negro. So blinded by that power, each side fails to completely see one another, at the expense of their own liberation.
So let’s reconsider the ideological schism among advocates and members of marginalized communities, Black or otherwise. What if that schism were about their relationship with one another, rather than with the “master”? Indeed, if we were to decenter white supremacy from our understanding of that schism, we may prove more successful at repairing it, and developing a stronger united front. Perhaps that’s the bigger lesson of the Black Panther franchise: that marginalized groups must first get on the same page if they ever wish to succeed against oppressive forces. And for that, the focus must be taken off the oppressor; they should neither be a source of motivation, nor the bar against which community members gauge themselves or one another. This is what we find by the end of Wakanda Forever, two warring nations of color calling a truce, coming together, despite their differences, in the name of mutual protection rather than individual power. Indeed, perhaps the real power lies in neither appeasing nor punishing the oppressor, but in learning to remove them from the conversation all together.
