Relations by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

Author:Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

The Killmonger Doctrine of Color and Humanity

Joe Robert Cole

Essay

[This essay is not part of Marvel canon or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the musings of a brown-skinned writer during quarantine.]

One evening in the winter of 2020, I was spiraling down a Google wormhole for a project that I was working on when a few YouTube clips of people talking about the complicated relationship between Africans and African Americans sparked my curiosity. At moments, the individuals in the clips were inspiring and insightful, while other moments were frustrating. The dynamic between African Americans and Africans is one that Ryan Coogler and I explored narratively in the screenplay for the movie Black Panther, so I had spent some time thinking about the subject in the process of writing the film. In Black Panther, the fictional African nation of Wakanda celebrates liberty among its own people while turning a blind eye to the generations of oppression of people of African ancestry outside its borders. It serves as a cautionary tale of the potential consequences that can arise when basic human and civil rights are not vigorously advocated for on behalf of all people. Inflamed by these injustices, the character of Killmonger envisions a world where the African Diaspora and the African continent come together and take a stand against the mistreatment of Black people everywhere.

In one of the YouTube clips, a woman from Africa, who does not specify her country of origin, charges that African Americans do not do enough to learn about Africa. As I listened, two questions crossed my mind: First, which country of the more than fifty African nations did she mean? All of them? Just hers? Second, when and where, in a practical sense, would the average African or African American meaningfully learn about one another? The connection is certainly not fostered in the elementary and high school systems in the United States, and from what I have been able to ascertain, the study of African Americans is not a part of many, if any, primary and secondary school African curriculums.

In the public schools that I attended in the United States, Africa received little or no attention. My early perception of the continent was formed by images of starving children on commercials, colloquial platitudes of past African kings and queens, and news stories of endless wars. One would imagine that institutions of higher learning offer the most opportunities, outside of finding books on your own or social advocacy groups, to learn about the ties between the two groups—but how many academic programs exist with a focus on the through lines connecting Black Americans to Africa beyond the slave trade? I am sure there are some, but I am guessing not many.

When I was hired to write Black Panther, my knowledge of Africa weighed on my mind. I had written many scripts without walking in the door with a full grasp of the place at the center of a story, but this felt different, more personal. Throughout college and my

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