Black Panther Wakanda Forever was a beautiful representation about how people of color are pit against each other because of hurt and pain caused by colonialism and the fear of it.
Too often we treat oppression as if it is a competition. Who has suffered more, whose history was the roughest, who receives more compassion or hate from the rest of the world. And even when we try to work together often we don’t want to bend in our ways or be open in order to understand another or communicate/listen effectively to come to an agreement on how we can stand together.
In this movie, the UN and the CIA were of course a threat to the protagonists, but they truly didn’t even have to intervene directly. The mere threat of exploitation and colonization was enough to nearly drive Talokan and Wakanda into a frenzy and start fighting one another and hurting each other. And sometimes we get so caught up in the hurt and the vengeance until we’re bleeding out with our hands around each other’s throats and we pause to think “why are we even doing this to each other?”
Ultimately it’s pointless, the endless cycle of pain and hurt and for what? That’s what the colonizers want. The UN/CIA knew nothing about Talokan, but if Wakanda and Talokan had wiped each other out, they would’ve loved nothing more than to sweep up and exploit the vibranium resources left behind without having to do any of the dirty work. Shuri realized that being consumed with vengeance wasn’t going to help anybody, and the fear/threat of losing more loved ones was only going to get more people hurt. It killed Killmonger and it was killing Shuri, Namor and their people. The very people they were trying to protect. They both saw the beauty in each other’s cultures, and they knew it was worth dying to protect, but not like this. Why should they tear each other down like this when they have both fought such hardship to thrive?
Originally Talokan saw Wakanda’s act of opening their borders as a threat against themselves, but it was the fear of what the colonizers would do, and yet Talokan attacked Wakanda for it. In the end, their perspective shifted, and Wakanda also chose to respect their decision to remain a closed culture.
We celebrate each other’s differences in their cultural uniqueness, and we come together to unite over our values to support one other.
The only way we stand a chance against the effects of colonization and the systems set in place today is if we continue to find ways to support one another and stand together, instead of doing the work for the oppressors and tearing each other down.
