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drthasanjohnson · 7 years ago

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“A man who has not prepared his own children to be without him has failed as a father.” T’Chaka in The Black Panther (2018)

Rest in Power to Reg. E. Cathey and Luv Bug Starsky

(Warning: A Lot of Damn Spoilers!)

First of all, any assessment of Marvel’s The Black Panther that doesn’t start with these two boys pretending to be an 8-foot man and trying to get into a showing is suspect. This was hilariously too damn much and lets you know just how hungry folk are for this movie (especially Black folks)—even if Disney walks away with the proceeds from our desperate need to be represented humanely.

Second, before I get into anything else, I want to pay due respect to Michael Jai White and Wesley Snipes, stars of Spawn (1997) and Blade (1998), for starting this new era of comic movies despite not being credited for having done such. I also credit Snipes with at least starting the discussion of a live-action T’Challa/Black Panther back in the 1990s. Although he ended up having to make Blade due to not having the right support team, I had never heard anyone else talk about doing a live-action film before him. And regardless of the status of special effects at the time, I’m sure he would’ve done the character as much justice as he did Blade. (*Special props to Djimon Honsou, Keith David, and Jeffrey D. Sams who played T’Challa in the animated shows and films.)

Michael Jai White

Wesley Snipes

After having watched Disney’s Black Panther twice this past weekend, I’ve reached several conclusions that merit discussion: the history of Black comic activists has been downplayed, the politics of the film were problematic, Killmonger was connected to someone you forgot about, women warriors can die, and Black communities really do need a political education on Africa.

First, recognize that T’Challa, the Black Panther himself, was Disney’s first (and only) Black prince for Black boys. Having taken my 12-year old son to the movie, I didn’t realize how few Black princes there were until I saw his excitement at seeing a hero that looked like him. Despite the myriad of female princesses, Disney has never proffered a Black prince before…even when they made the famed Princess and the Frog (2009).

Princess and the Frog (2009)

They even went so far as to bring Brazilian actor Bruno Campos to play “Prince Naveen,” denying millions of Black boys from seeing themselves as worthy princes of Black princesses’ affections. (At the time, I remember seeing Black girls dancing around in princess dresses. Strange how no one cared that there should be adequate representations for Black boys in The Princess and the Frog but with Black Panther there needed to be ample “strongBlackwomen”…but let me not get ahead of myself). Seeing Black boys centered garners accusations of rampant sexism, yet centering Black girls is just “right.” Hence, in Princess, the primary Black male presence aside from a brief glimpse at Tiana’s father, was Keith David’s menacing Dr. Facilier—a voodoo witch doctor.

The evil Dr. Facilier (Keith David)

And the unspoken nod to Katrina in this film only presented Black men as a problem because…well, you know…we weren’t really affected by Katrina so we didn’t need any affirming representation…right?

And clearly based on the excitement for Black Panther, Black boys will no longer tolerate seeing themselves as heroes that are glorified sidekicks (Iron Man’s Don Cheadle as “Rhodey/War Machine” or Anthony Mackie’s “Sam Wilson/Falcon” come to mind) or janitors (Star Wars and John Boyega’s “Finn”). Hopefully not. I’ve collected comics for 38 years and am one of millions who likely never thought we’d ever see a Black Panther live-action film, but then again I never thought I’d see a Black president or a film on Nat Turner either. All came with disappointing repercussions, as Obama was often dismissed by racists as incompetent and Nate Parker was…well…a trial run for a #MeToo campaign that almost unnecessarily eliminated his career.

T’Challa was created in 1966 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and like Spawn, Luke Cage, Falcon, and Blade (and many others), they were the product of white men’s imaginations about Black male heroes. Panther, in fact, was mainly disinterested in associating with the politics of African Americans and distanced himself. For white male creators, any politics that made white men uncomfortable were made non-existent, while Black male heroes’ powers were usually negligible and easily dismissed in combat, and their historical outspokenness erased. In fact, most are virtually unaware that Black males were purposefully blocked by the Comics Code Authority. That said, there was a generations-long battle since the inception of All-Negro Comics in 1947 by Orrin Cromwell Evans to develop Black male superhero characters. Cromwell’s venture only lasted one issue because he was blocked from access to the paper he needed to print it. Similarly, distribution would be another barrier whites used to prevent Black productions from seeing the light of day (from comics to music and film).

All-Negro Comics (1947)

With all due respect to Lee and Kirby, having white men develop them helped, but didn’t/couldn’t allow for the nuance (or politics) of what Black male writers themselves would do to make characters more authentic to the African American experience. And this is what makes them popular now. Writers such as Christopher Priest and Reginald Hudlin fought to bring to Panther what people love most about him now: the culture of an unconquered African nation, vibranium, the Dora Milaje, and the marriage with X-Men’s Storm. And to be clear, vibranium, materially, symbolized the resource that African Americans did not have that others did: whites colonized the globe, Arabs had oil, Jews were merchantman and built a stake in media production, etc. And each could also sell their culture in America in ways African Americans couldn’t (from Italian pizzas to Irish leprechauns). African Americans had little of this, and had no home country to go back to. Thus, Black writers and readers comics like Black Panther to imagine having support we actually never had.

Writer Christopher Priest

Writer/Director/Producer Reginald Hudlin

But with that imagining, there still political critiques. Even in Hudlin’s epic re-imagining of T’Chaka and his critique of Western colonial forces, he pushes boundaries further than Coogler’s vision by at least critiquing Western practices.

In fact, considering the real Black Panther Party for Self-Defense’s history with the FBI and the CIA, you would think the only CIA agent in Coogler’s film would have at least been treated with suspicion if not outright contempt.

Coogler’s Vision

Angela Bassett as Ramonda in The Black Panther (2018)

So let’s get this out of the way: The Black Panther was highly entertaining. I loved the casting, the color schemes, the technology, the way they filmed Black skin hues, the fashion, and even the hair (or lack thereof)…and dammit if Angela Bassett still ain’t fine at 60! Anyway, these things are not always done well for Black actors in major white-funded ventures so it bears acknowledgement.

The Black Panther Cast (2018)

The Black Panther

Coogler, as he did with Creed (2015), has a special compassion for Black male storytelling that isn’t common in Hollywood. At the beginning of Creed, he shows scores of Black boys locked up that had me misty within the first few minutes of the film. Similarly, his compassion for Black men shows through in The Black Panther. The father/son dynamics between T’Chaka/T’Challa and even N’Jobu/N’Jadaka (Eric “Killmonger” Stevens) are endearing, and the compassion shown between them was inspiring to say the least.

Coogler understands Black pain around sons and fathers, and demonstrated it well with Creed (where just Apollo’s facial expression when Jordan’s “Donny” was knocked out inspired him to get up and fight back—a scene that sent chills down my spine). He understands what fathers contribute to the raising of a child (especially a boy) despite that intersectional-feminists would have you believe that we’re not necessary for families.

Fathers instill discipline, and the capacity to achieve. They teach by instilling their voice into you until you mature enough to make that voice your own and can drive yourself to achieve, giving you the capacity to instill it in another youth when you mature. In essence, fathers, as a whole, contribute conditional love. During childhood, while mothers instill a child with the understanding that they will be loved no matter what (which is valuable to a child), fathers help young adults understand that respect must be earned, and despite loving you, fathers won’t pay you respect until you earn it. The relationships demonstrated in Panther and Creed lament the absence of that father presence, and send Creed’s Donny on a path for self-respect he can’t get directly from his slain father but does get through his surrogate father Rocky.

Similarly, Eric’s (Killmonger) quest for the reckoning of his father’s death and dismissal from Wakandan memory is partially about retribution, and we see how much this means to him when he sees his father in the ancestral realm, and can’t help but cry despite suggesting that he can’t because “everybody dies.” Furthermore, his quest to have his past experience acknowledged and paid for symbolizes the ignored African American experience by Africans who see little connection with African Americans, and this still breeds tension today.

Coogler’s nod to blackness is also prevalent. From sibling rivalry to the use of capoeira and Sanuces Ryu Jiu-Jitsu, this brother acknowledges black traditions. Hence, Avery Brook’s Deep Space Nine aside, Black men being great fathers may be empirically documented, but it’s still rarely seen in popular media. Even the subtle act of silencing white men with power on soil that your people control is awe-inspiring and likely overlooked by mainstream society. In essence, the silencing of empowered white men in power is more than a joke or a fanciful wish. It’s the aspiration of those with no power.

Winston Duke as M’Baku in Black Panther (2018)

The problem here is the absence of African American context. There were no African American families, culture, histories, or presence within the course of the story except Killmonger. And no, Wakandans can’t stand in for that because after all, they’re not Black. They sidestepped the process when the rest of the world was plunged into the discourse on race through violence and enslavement. That said, their perceived relationship with other Africans let alone African Americans is filtered through an experience of self-imposed alienation. Even the scenes where men of African descent are affectionate with their sons (and vice-versa) read differently because these men were never marked as “Black,” and thus never had to grapple with race as a negative brand…never had to be marked as “men-nots,” and never had to be considered caricatures of human beings incapable of rational thought. A brand that marked you as less than humans. It is therefore not surprising that the Wakandans don’t see a link to African Americans. What is surprising is that they kill anyone from their countries who do. That made this film very dangerous for me…

Because of the absence of the African American experience, Eric’s statement about those without power who never had the means to win is REAL TALK, and I even got misty-eyed thinking about how much of a difference it would’ve made for Black resistance movements since slavery to have had access to a country’s army, wealth, and technology…how many battles we fought with no support or adequate means. Essentially begging (or pressuring) whites for just treatment. Much of which fell on deaf ears. In that moment, I felt more for Killmonger than I’m sure I was supposed to.

And here is where I found my footing. Both T’Challa and Eric went too far for me. For T’Challa, creating learning centers in ghettoes was like throwing pocket change to displaced Africans who’ve been struggling with poverty and oppression for centuries. That doesn’t even address the unclear relationship Wakanda develops with other countries via the U.N. and the desire to “share their technology.” And to make the CIA heroic while the comic book version of a 2018 Tupac/Huey P. Newton figure (yes, more Pac the Newton) is the villain? Naaaaa. This is what made this film The Spook Who Sat By the Door meets The Lion King (1994). But, as most never likely saw Spook, Jordan’s Killmonger was just a thug that hated Black women, and not a revolutionary that put liberation ahead of everything, including his own life.

Lawrence Cook and Don Blakely in The Spook Who Sat By the Door (1973)

As for Eric, his desire to conquer and colonize Europe, Asia, and America was never in our interest. Revolution was about being liberated from historical and contemporary enslavement and underdevelopment, either to develop our own country or to dramatically improve their stock while here in this country, but colonizing the West has never been one of our goals. Fictionally, “vibranium” would’ve been a useful means for liberation, but historically African Americans have always lacked a strong relationship with any outside country. This alone has contributed to our diminished status in the US. and we don’t need a fictional mineral to see what the absence of such international relationships has done to us.

Still the tensions between continental Africans and what Yvette Carnell refers to as “Native Black/Descendants of Slaves” (NBDOS) was palpable, and is felt when I see online posts that say “#TeamKillmonger.” That’s real talk, and that helped me appreciate complex characters, good storytelling, and intriguing character development where few are completely innocent or completely guilty. Beyond that, it was problematic that NBDOS were the villains in the film, and that their liberation should be squelched in lieu of hobnobbing with historically colonial countries. Seeing a global liberation would’ve been an interesting development that could’ve trickled down to Black folk in the Marvel universe as a whole, but more importantly, could’ve inspired real Black folk to imagine what freedom what look like in real life. And that’s the worst thing about this film, it kills the idea of revolution altogether.

And this bears further reflection: despite how many generations have fought against systemic oppression on the grounds of race, gender, and class, what does liberation actually look like? What does redemption, healing, and much-needed material wealth look like for people who’ve historically lacked it? It’s the same question I asked at the end of disparate films such as The Spook Who Sat By the Door (1973) where the film ends in a seemingly endless revolution, or in The Da Vinci Code (2003), where the truth about Christ’s non-divine historical existence is suppressed for…no real reason!? In essence, WHY CAN’T WE IMAGINE WHAT HAVING TRUTH, FREEDOM, AND WEALTH LOOKS LIKE FOR A PEOPLE WHO’VE LACKED IT? But the answer is simple: because doing so is dangerous to the status quo. Films that teach us to acquiesce and accept our lot is the name of the game, not films that motivate us to radically change society. And why should we expect anything different from Disney?

Appropriately, Antonio Moore and Yvette Carnell have been calling for a Black Realist re-assessment as it pertains to wealth, politics, and the aspirationalism that many Black folk entertain beyond their material capabilities. As a media analyst, I agree, albeit with a caveat. I don’t dismiss fiction and media as mere fanciful thinking or escapism. I think it can have incredible impact as far as propaganda goes, and has greatly contributed to the detriment of people of African descent, especially in the Western hemisphere as descendants of slaves. I agree wholeheartedly, however, that we often hyper-prioritize media entertainment while dismissing a real political focus, thus being satisfied with glitz with no substance, exchanging a Black face in a movie for a substantive message. We must grapple with propaganda because America spends billions producing it, and ignoring it is not an adequate means of dispelling it. It must be met head on, and we must give Black folk information to confront these images so that we may properly contextualize these narratives with historical accuracy and empirical data.

Denzel Washington as Malcolm X (1992) listening to a Joe Louis boxing match

I agree that such media investments reflects powerlessness… People’s interest in seeing a positive representation of us harkens back to the days of us listening to radios to hear whether Joe Louis beat a white fighter because it meant something to the race (as what happened in the scene from Malcolm X when he worked on the train and they listened to Louis’ success while serving sandwiches to whites). And materially, our situation is worse than it was in the 1940s and 1950s. So yes, such fiction shouldn’t stand in for serious politics (or revolution), but much of the time it does until there’s a credible movement to act as a vehicle for Black progress. Many societies have media that complements their culture and their politics, so it does have its place. And we must recognize that people need to have heroes that succeed—especially when those people have not been allowed to do so actually. Black folks have had their heroes determined for us by white elites, government, and corporations for so long it’s stymied our imagination.

(Left to right) Eddie Murphy, James Earl Jones, and Madge Sinclair in Coming to America (1988)

For example, the closest thing we could imagine in mainstream cinema on the scale of Wakanda was the fictional nation of Zumunda in Coming To America (1988), a previously colonized country where African royalty are ultra-rich, play polo, have their currencies in British pounds, and wear Western tuxedos to royal events, but we can’t imagine what an independent country that supports Black people looks like?

Women, Comics, and the New Trend of Female Superiority

As far as gender goes, there’ve been a bevy of articles that highlight the gender politics of the film. Praising the film’s gender politics, articles recalling 19th century Dahomey Amazons to pieces suggesting that we should “trust Black women” are all the rage right now. What I find interesting is that the deferring to women is seen as “past due,” as if the historically rare occurrences of women armies were the norm. As if data that shows that the average male is stronger than 99% of women is somehow untrue, and in almost every movie, there now needs to be a female character who kicks men three times where weight through walls—even if she has no training or powers at all!1

In Disney’s attempt to spearhead (white) women’s political movements, they sought to prioritize bringing women into the comic space by bypassing Black men that have been fighting for space in comics since the 1940s, having been erroneously imagined as being linked with white men as “men” and downplayed. Black men’s “space” has been earmarked for others, and even when present they are apolitical, have no voice, are emasculated, and are often sexually-neutered. Seeing such acknowledgement of women in the comic universe is kind of like if the federal government recognized breast cancer in Black communities and made Black men the “face” of it. True, 2% of Black breast cancer cases are Black men, but this is a battle Black women have fought for the longest. Similarly, Black men have been fighting for comic book space for almost 80 years…and their struggle still hasn’t been regarded. Doubt me? Since Black Panther came out, which Black comic writers and artists from the past 80 years have you seen acknowledged? Don’t worry, I’ll wait. And this is not strange. When women were fighting to have dolls be made for girls of color, I didn’t once see anyone suggest that they should target young males of color to sell them to. They didn’t prioritize boys when dealing with Black Barbies or Disney princesses…but the reverse is somehow a need that needs to now be met?

Look, I’m not opposed to the showing of strong women, I just generally oppose HOW it’s done. From Hela in Thor: Ragnorok (2017) to Rey in the Star Wars saga, to Wonder Woman, to Gwen Stacy in Marvel: Spider-Man animated series, white female heroes increasingly walk in (untrained), toss a bunch of men around, never lose fights unless to other women, and then call it a day. There’s usually no effort, learning curve, or growth that has to take place. And they rival men who’ve been doing something for years in a matter of moments. At least in Coogler’s film, the women didn’t have it that easy. They fought and had to demonstrate skill, and even then still lost at times. Strange how female heroes who are treated realistically had to be Black… In the American legacy of race and gender, Black women were seen as more masculine than “real” (code for White) women, so it’s interesting that they seem to be the first to be treated in a realistic fashion as it pertains to combat in movies.

Still, the Dora Milaje are not treated as women from a society that’s had little contact with the world for the last few centuries should be. For example, the Dora Milaje (similar to the bathers in Coming to America) were implied to be sexually “available” to Panther kings. They were, in fact, the wives of the king. They were trained as his “ride or die” girls, and were his personal secret service (not his entire army by the way). This was a concept that Westernized women in the comics found reprehensible (such as Storm from the X-Men). That said, why wouldn’t that be in the film? Understand, I’m not personally invested in seeing women concubines in the film as some sort of statement about what women “should be” or whatever. What I’m saying is, this is a country that’s had its own tradition for generations, and not only would they likely be doing things that Western sensibilities might be offended by, they might not care that you don’t like it! Even after being introduced to Western feminism they might have a uniquely different view of womanhood than Western women (I experienced this once while talking to a West African woman raised in a country that practiced multiple marriages, and she laughed at American women as confused and non-feminine). Here, the film veers from this and only highlights what we might find titillating about them: they have bald heads and they can fight.

Lunella Lafayette as Moon Girl (2016)

The greater issue for me was that the Black Panther I’d been waiting to see since I was a child was supposed to be one of the top 10 intellects on the planet. Yet that honor was given to his younger sister Shuri. Yet again, Disney denies Black boys the fruits of an 80-year battle Black men have fought in comics in order to suit the gender politics of the moment–and I’ve already discussed how problematic that’s been. Even in the comics, girls have become the new superpower, as a Black girl is now the smartest person in the world (see image above) in Marvel Comics. Yet Black boys already see black females, the highest college enrolled demographic in the country, excelling in mostly female-taught schools quite regularly. The purpose of the Black Panther Priest and Hudlin worked on was to inspire the very boys that don’t get to see their own genius, since they graduate high school at a roughly 50% rate. I don’t suggest that Black women aren’t brilliant, I’m merely suggesting that in a space that Black males have been fighting to be more than janitors in, it would’ve been nice to see Panther be as brilliant as he was supposed to be… Just as in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s when people protested for more Black dolls for girls, how many of them sought to make those dolls Black males so as to attract more male buyers?

Also, the aesthetic that women’s strength has to solely be defined based on how many men they dominate is tired and predictable. And this trope has become universal in film and television. Women demonstrate their “power” by claiming traditionally male spaces, yet no one seems to be pushing for basketball, football, MMA, or boxing to become “genderless.” Why? Because it would illustrate the differences between men and women in a manner inconsistent with feminist ideology. Still, males are routinely presented as less intelligent, weaker, easily dominated (by women), and in need of female supervision.

The CW’s Black Lightning (2018)

For example, if you check the CW’s new show Black Lightning, females routinely kick men in the balls, outsmart them, dominate them, punch them through walls, and advise male heroes. Lightning, or Jefferson Pierce, a school principal and superhero with electricity power, routinely apologizes and blindly accepts wise counsel from his female vice-principal, his ex-wife, and his two daughters. He’s routinely corrected and “mothered” by each, and is measured as a good man based on how well he follows their suggestions—or apologizes (often) when he doesn’t. Whether as hero with decades of experience or as their father, he must follow them to be “respected,” because they’re…uugghh…woke? Here, masculine authority is problematized and assumed to oppressively patriarchal…even when sacrificial for family and community. Black Panther, instead, avoids this by parceling out the comic characters’ qualities to his female co-stars.

Doctor Poison in Wonder Woman (2017)

The core issue with many of these programs (and I stress “programming” as in to shape our thinking) is that they ultimately cannot conceive of female evil. Women are only “evil” if damaged by men, but not of their own accord. In Wonder Woman (2017), the villains to be defeated by Wonder Woman are male, while the female scientist who comes up with the deadly gas and weapons walks away scot-free. She’s not arrested, hit, or even confronted in any meaningful way.

There needs to be female accountability, especially in combat films. Vlogist Yvette Carnell comments on this when she states,

“We seem to want female equality without female agency and responsibility. That elder had blood on her hands for sitting around talking tradition while people starved. And men get killed in movies all the time and no one bats an eye. Furthermore, Killmonger’s girlfriend wasn’t an innocent. She was involved with the museum heist. She knew the consequences of that life. She made her choices. And she knew it was over for her when she got taken hostage by a damn one armed man. Killmonger NEEDED that white mercenary to get into Wakanda and his girlfriend wasn’t more important than the mission. She knew it, which is why she apologized right before Killmonger shot her. So y’all please miss me with the damsel in distress misogyny nonsense. Being free and equal means you can catch a bullet too.”

In The Black Panther, most of the women are heroic and internally pure. They are responsible for no evil, and have to clean up behind the men that make a moral mess of things. Each male is conflicted, while the women remain relatively pure. The closest thing to such fallibility as found in the men would be Danai Gurira as Okoye, who supports Killmonger’s reign because she’s duty-bound to support the throne, but this is not on par with T’Chaka’s betrayal of Wakanda, or T’Challa’s denial of Eric’s claim or his dismissal of supporting the liberation of oppressed Africans around the globe, or N’Jobu’s lie to his older brother T’Chaka or his “betrayal” of Wakanda, or Zuri’s lie to T’Challa, or Eric’s murders, etc., etc. None of the women bear the weight of such misjudgments. They remain the moral compass of the film, and as I said in my review of Fences, this one-sided capacity for evil is untrue, a-historical, and dishonest. The invisibility of female evil is a huge problem in our culture. It’s a feminist lie that women can’t be evil without men’s influence, and they’ve either been partners or have directly benefited from male sacrifices—whether altruistic or problematic. But as long as female representation is dictated by catering to a female consumer market, it will always be distorted. And this is not a status Black men have ever enjoyed.

Hence, Sesali Bowen’s essay “Black Panther Has A Message For Black Men: Trust Black Women” is a bit disingenuous in that her assessment of Black women is “cherry-picked” to say the least. So yes, Black women voted for Hilary Clinton more than any other demographic. She ignores that Black men voted for Clinton at the second highest rates (and Black women don’t overwhelmingly have their voting rights stripped from them as Black men do. Black men experience felony disenfranchisement to a rate of 1 of 13 African American [mostly males], yet only 1 of 56 Non-African Americans have had their right to vote taken away because of felony disenfranchisement (Dr. Patrick Leon Mason). Bowen fails to mention that they nevertheless voted for the candidate that pushed for “super-predators” to be more harshly incarcerated. And yes, due to their greater access to education they have more businesses, businesses that belie our economic reality in that the majority are one-person businesses that have no employees. And contrary to her article, Black men only make more than educated Black women when we ignore the economic cost of incarceration. And her assertion that Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman?” only spoke to Black male sexism obscures that Black men such as David Walker made similar arguments 20 years earlier (“Brothers, Aren’t We Men?” in David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizen’s of the World). Lastly, she prioritizes individual women’s accounts of the Civil Rights and Black Power eras only if they affirm Black male sexism, but interviews with women that denied a widespread Black male sexism in protest movements or the development of progressive Black male organizations as outlined by Tommy J. Curry’s The Man-Not (2017) somehow gets overlooked. My point? She completely overlooks the capacity for negative female behavior, both in and out of the film.

But why does Black Panther deny a global Black revolution in film and ignore female evil? At the end of the day, it’s because both Western media and society fear Black male revolt (from Nat Turner to Rakem Balogun), this is why Black men must be hyper-policed, incarcerated, undereducated, and unemployed (even in Black Panther, in the museum they called security when Eric even mentions that the curator’s white ancestors stole African relics). Accordingly, the primary goal of a colonial education is to underdevelop and hamper the potential politicization of militant male cadre that won’t seek redress through established legal channels. Nor will they rest on the dominant culture’s empathy for their plight by asking for handouts. The goal is to monitor and prevent such a group from revolting. This was true during the acquisition for slaves, chattel slavery itself, the forms of religion they were “allowed” to practice, and is still the case now. Obedience, silence, erasure is the point. This is why Black men are more greatly targeted on a global scale, experience higher cancer rates, were enslaved more, raped more, lynched more, and are still today killed more by police (2017 Police Killings: “223 killed, 214 Black men & 9 Black women (20 unarmed Black men killed & 1 unarmed Black woman killed).

Yet despite this, when it comes to Black men there’s one thing I think everyone forgets. That Black men have performed superheroic levels of both resistance and physicality in REAL life. They have been the most progressive groups of men because of their oppression despite being mislabeled as the most exploitive… From sports to war, Black men have routinely performed superheroic feats that can be measured against any demographics’ athletic achievements… Intellectually, we’ve seen Black genius from inventions and academic scholarship, and from politics to activism, Black men have been superheroes despite dying before they’ve even turned 40. Funny how they are imagined as less so.

Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia

In fact, even behind fiction there is truth. The real Black Panther, king of an unconquered African country? Haile Selassie. Don’t let the fiction fool you, #BlackMenAreHeroes. Maybe one day, media or not, we can actually experience a global Black revolution that links Black men and women in a clear, uncompromising purpose while drawing from the sacrifices of ancestors that made it possible, highlighting their stories truthfully. Until then, #TeamRevolutionDespiteDisney all day…

Citation:

“The mean effect size for these sex differences in total and upper body muscle mass and strength is about 3, which indicates less than 10% overlap between the male and female distributions, with 99.9% of females falling below the male mean,” in William D.Lassek and Steven J.C.Gaulin, “Costs And Benefits of Fat-Free Muscle Mass In Men: Relationship To Mating Success, Dietary Requirements, and Native Immunity,” Evolution and Human Behavior (Volume 30, Issue 5, September 2009), pg. 322-328.

“Coogler’s Brilliant Black Panther?: Africans, DOS, Woke Black Women…and Oh Yeah, Dying Black Men” by T. Hasan Johnson, Ph.D. “A man who has not prepared his own children to be without him has failed as a father.”

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