Labels Like Black Panther For Recent Movie Only Consolidates Racism. Why Not African Panther?
Updated: Apr 20, 2021
Occasional Debate February 23, 2018
While Africans, African Americans, and other African descendants continue lamenting about racism, they themselves, paradoxically, continue at the same time subscribing and applying concepts, metaphors, and other drivers of racism. Recent example of this, is overwhelming participation, support and promotion of a movie called Black Panther. Black Panther is an American movie that was premiered in Los Angeles, CA, on January 29, 2018 and now available worldwide. It features a mass of African Americans, African British, and Africans, and geared towards challenging the dominance of movies about invincible fictional European super heroes. As such, the movie presents what is expected to be first fictional African super hero. That is fair enough, but then, why did the producers choose a title for the movie that entails Black instead of African? We know by now that Black and White labels in demographic classification are racist, presenting metaphors that depict inferiority and superiority of Africans/African descendants and Europeans respectively. So, by describing themselves as Blacks or getting involved in a movie that perceives Africans and their descendants as Black, the actors of African origin and ancestry directly subscribed and supported the racist connotation inherent the Black label of Africans and their descendants. What the actors are saying is, yes, we are, indeed, inferior to Europeans, and it is therefore perfectly okay to have a movie about us that has a Black label in its title! Accordingly, the crucial question arising at this juncture, is how would the Black Panther movie present an African or African descendant super hero while its title and participants clearly suggest that Africans and their descendants will always be inferior to Europeans? In our honest view, the movie could have made sense and perhaps be helpful contribution to efforts geared towards eradication of racism, if it had a realistic and acceptable title like African Panther. What do you guys out there think?
Lets debate this over the weekend!!!! Learn more about Black Panther movie at the video below
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