Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Get Me Outa Wakanda!
Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor
22 Feb 2018
🖨️ Print Article

#EnemyPropaganda I finally got around to seeing the Black Panther movie Tuesday. I’ve been black nearly seven decades. My blackness does not require affirmation from the Disney/Marvel Comics Universe, where Tony Stark is a greedy Pentagon contractor, where Captain America is a genetically modified organism, where the Wakandan king and the wannabe king both work with/for the CIA, and where Daredevil’s pals (season 1 episode 4) note that investigative reporting on “teachers union scandals” is as personally perilous as crossing the Mafia.

For those of us aiming to build a better world, this movie is nothing short of enemy propaganda.

#GetMeTheHellOutaWakanda

In the Black Panther movie, all the Wakandan players are royalty, their counselors, their advisors or their rivals. All the strikingly beautiful and capable Wakandan women take orders from men. The only unambiguous good guy is the Frodo looking CIA agent. The homicidal Killmonger character is calculated to sully the very notion of black rebellion against unjust authority, while Pan Africanism and humanism are defecated upon from multiple angles. Cinematic bar fights, car chases and battle scenes are a dime a dozen, and worst of all Wakanda isn’t even rendered in any visually inspiring way.

#TheThirstIsReal

The movie disrespects its audience and is a standing insult to science fiction and afro futurism. As Dr. Jared Ball points out, we can’t just go make and market another movie to compete with this one. Disney/Marvel Studios put tens of millions into the promotion of this thing alone, and for now millions of people are buying their message. That’s called cultural hegemony.

Those who would drink from this nasty water for “affirmation” and “black joy” must be deeply desperately thirsty. And evidently thirst confuses before it kills.

The only good thing I got from this movie was the motivation to look for and find some real, respectful, challenging and innovative science fiction and afro-futurism, preferably written by some black women to wash the rancid taste of Marvel’s superhero industrial complex from the inside of my head.

#EmailISDarkSocialMedia

I wasn’t going to record this commentary for Black Agenda Radio. Originally it was a Facebook post, but it generated such a response that it deserved a life outside of corporate social media.

Because Black Agenda Report is equally critical of Republicans and Democrats, because as black leftists we consistently oppose capital, patriarchy, empire, the black political class and the bipartisan war machine we are the only black oriented media outfit alleged by the Washington Post and Prop Or Not to be under the evil influence of the Russians. Google and other corporate social media have targeted Black Agenda Report in order to restrict your access to our content. If I, Glen Ford or Margaret Kimberley or Ajamu Baraka or Black Agenda Report was temporarily or permanently banned from Facebook all our posts and their comments would disappear. Facebook claims all posts as its private property. And even if they don’t ban us, it can be extremely difficult to find a Facebook post or a Tweet more than a day or two old.

So I’m posting this at BlackAgendaReport.Com and at Black Agenda Radio Commentaries on SoundCloud where you can easily find it from now on. Please follow and share our stuff from those places on all your favorite social media. And please visit BlackAgendaReport.Com to subscribe to our direct and free weekly email of each week’s new content. Email is called dark social media because Google, Facebook, Twitter cannot track or block it.

Special thanks to Dr. Johanna Fernandez for the title #GetMeOutaWakanda.

For Black Agenda Radio I’m Bruce Dixon.

Black Panther movie

More Stories


  • shotcallers and casualties
    Raymond Nat Turner , BAR poet-in-residence
    not a great true believer....
    27 Mar 2019
    I’m Caffie’s son—raised to resist, taught to question… Erring on the side of thinking for Myself
  • keeping us safe
    Evan Hawthorne
    "what the paranoid psychopath said (a rattled soliloquy faithfully transcribed from transparency's crypt)"
    27 Mar 2019
    "keep us safe" cried the screened weeded people, pledging allegiance to the identity-plied, personified, bipolar caparisoned, uniformly garrisoned,
  • Drown Sanders and Strangle Self-determination: What the Rich Will Do to Stay in Power
    Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
    Drown Sanders and Strangle Self-determination: What the Rich Will Do to Stay in Power
    27 Mar 2019
    The corporate Democrats are flooding the presidential race with professional servants of the rich to drown Sanders and his loyal base of support.
  • Freedom Rider: Julian Assange and Robert Mueller
    Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Julian Assange and Robert Mueller
    27 Mar 2019
    Russiagate has imploded, but the Democratic Party still wants to stifle dissent and make certain that there will be no Wikileaks in the future.
  • In DC This Weekend, Say “No” to NATO’s Global Aggressions
    Black Alliance For Peace
    In DC This Weekend, Say “No” to NATO’s Global Aggressions
    27 Mar 2019
    We will take to the streets against NATO, the U.S./European instrument for the continued colonization of the world. 
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us