I concur with your assessment of the characterization of Eric Killmonger, T’Challa’s nemesis in the Black Panther movie. As a student of history and a Pan-Africanist of sorts, the historical and social purpose of Eric Killmonger was of particular concern. I must confess that I came away from the film, quite disappointed with that treatment of the plot.
From the get go in my mind, KILLMONGER was more than a name; it was characterization, the moral foreground on which the clash of Wakanda (continental Africa) and Eric (Diaspora)was to take place. Against that notion, Killmonger was never going to survive the movie!
Black Panther the movie cannot be viewed in isolation of black history and global political realities — it’s an impossibility. Within that context, the politics of the film gets a failing grade, inasmuch as it is devoid of any semblance of political efficacy for black liberation, Pan-Africanist or the reverberating calls for reparatary justice and so much of the issues facing the contemporary black man or woman.
The film disintegrates into just another black on black violent movie in the political conflict between the Diasporic Killmonger and the the continental Wakandans. It is at this juncture that the subtleties and duality and of it become apparent. Perhaps, Black Panther would have had greater sociopolitical value if it had been placed within the context of the protracted black liberation struggle against white supremacy and the global African struggle against neo-colonialism — identity politics. But for commercial and political value, identity politics is rinsed package and thrown overboard like the ancestors who Killmonger would prefer to join in their oceanic resting place.
Identity politics dismissed, we awake to Killmonger, a social liberator, black nationalist freedom fighter who wants to inspire, incite a social revolution against imperialism, up against a super rich African nation, unprepared to extend its vast resources to be used in the liberation of its siblings in the Diaspora. Wakanda is almost, if not a pseudo- conspirator, complicit in the oppression of its brothers and sisters. Sociopolitical value for cross continental, trans Atlantic cooperation, unity and the progressive agenda towards the creation of an Afro-global presence? — defeated. Wakanda can, yet is so unprepared, so indifferent and deliberately ignorant of the crimes of the outside that it results in an almost institutionalized policy of Wakanda for Wakandans only. Gross isolationism and nationalism, forces it to impeach family relations: T’Chaka’s almost congenital distrust of his own brother’s sincerity leads him to kill him rather than offer him the benefit of the doubt. T’Challa the younger is not privy to the enlightenment that comes with youth, to see any political efficacy in Killmonger’s plan and possibly reach any negotiated compromise. This meeting of Diaspora with continent is antithetical to the philosophical goals of Marcus Garvey and the Pan-African Movement. This is definitely not the script that they would have envisaged. This plot was designed to maintain conventional prejudices of white audiences and to echo old stereotypes. No turning of the page on the negative, racist narrative that have come to define black films.
Killmonger is emasculated. His ideals of social justice and the black radical tradition that the real Black Panthers represented are dismissed. Instead Killmonger is relegated to an angry, hothead, innercity gangster with what a plan to challenge the social order but lacking any philosophical, ideological structural framework. Ironically, all this from a man so highly educated who at least should have had theorectical smarts. Without that, he is just an angry, misinformed, vengeful thug.
Wakanda nationalism itself is emasculated. In possession of this all powerful resource, it shuts itself off from the rest of the colonized continent and the Diasporic New World, while having in its hands the power to challenge white supremacist repression. An economic, military superpower who selfishly and knowingly turns its back on black liberation can set no historical precedent for African unity and the cross continental cooperation that black radicalism hopes for.
Black Panther surreptitiously plays on the schisms between the Disaporic and continental African family. What Black Panther says is, we must move on. That in a world where a black man threatens to exact justice for white oppression we must put identity politics aside and join forces for a common good. As one white movie critic observes: “Black Panther states simply that we are all one tribe. And in the face of real world suffering we certainly are. Strife doesn’t give a damn about identity politics”. No problem with that basic premise, except that that hasn’t permeated the mind of white supremacy.
Black Panther rather than being a departure secretly upholds the same set of notions we are trying to escape. Killmonger’s right-mindedness for reparatary justice is distorted to the base desire for gratuitous mass slaughter of white people and when placed in this universality of brotherhood he must be stopped. The angry black who can’t bring reason to bear is humbled by the conscientious mercenary CIA functionary. Everett Ross earns his purple heart for gallantry in recognizing that under threat race is non-consequential. Not fair! Black Panther is a subtle tale that mimics South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation. It diminishes reparatary justice in favour of the maintenance of the post-colonial construct which handed Africans political independence without the economic control that they needed to achieve the same qualitative economic independence that ironically have preserved Wakanda. Wrong characterization.
