Black Panther is Just Entertaining
A speculative historiography by Robert Sinclair provoked by the question: What if the Kerner Commission recommendations had been implemented?
The Following is an Op-Ed from the Los Angeles Times:
Black Panther: The Movie Is Just Entertaining
By Iberia Adaku Hampton — February 16th, 2018
I’m a first year grad student at the Alice Allison Dunnigan Institute for media studies. When it was founded in the early 70s, it was called the Institute for Urban Media Studies.
Now if you’re confused as to why an institute now named for the first black journalist to receive White House press credentials was originally named for the study of media in densely populated cities, don’t be.
In the ’70s “urban” didn’t mean what you think it means. It meant Black, as in black people, communities, culture, music, “the whole nine” to use a term from my parents’ generation.
Urban is the type of euphemism, which is seriously discouraged in today’s journalistic community. In fact, it’s hard to imagine journalists or newscasters ever using, or allowing, euphemisms of any type when sharing stories with the public.
To even find reporting that could be categorized as “spin”, “propaganda”, “status quo bias”, “nationalism” and “political bias”, you’d have to go all the way back to my grandfather’s generation. And that’s what this article is really about.
You see, my grandfather Fred Hampton was a Black Panther. Not an actor in the movie, not a CGI’d citizen of Wakanda. I’m talking “the real deal”, as he puts it. He’s almost 70 now. But we’ll get to him in a moment.
As for me, when I first arrived on campus, I’ll admit, I was shell shocked. How did I get here? My mother is a Professor of Indigenous Story Design at Spelman, the first historical black ivy league college, and my father works for a publicly funded think tank focusing on the emancipation of marginalized narratives. So you could argue storytelling might literally be in my DNA, but the Dunnigan Institute is the root of modern journalism! I’m humbled to be a part of it.
It was the first Institution specifically created as a result of the Kerner Act. It is one of the collective public journalism organizations that proponents of democracy around the world revere. Today, the right to a clean representation of information and story ecosystem is synonymous with the right to clean air and water, but it’s a relatively new phenomenon.
In my grandfather’s day, the media was chalked full of cultural bias, corporate interests, political propaganda, and racism. News was literally a for-profit business. Weird, right? Even saying it is strange. “For profit news.” Creepy.
Of course over the years, a number of politicians have attempted to privatize journalism again, but so far public opinion is on our side, so we survive as a public service protected from private interests.
On the eve of the university’s finals week, when it was very important that I study, my friends and I decided to go to the new Black Panther movie. On the surface it sounds irresponsible, but my grandfather was a Black Panther, so I felt obligated.
As a Black Panther, he was a community leader, then a congressperson. He served in the Clinton Administration during Hillary’s second term as President. He was a father, policymaker, and author. Now his oldest granddaughter is going to see the Black Panther superhero movie…and Danai, Chadwick and Michael, I’m a fan!
As the movie ended and I reflected on the scenes that played out in that beautiful Wakanda landscape. I thought, wow, that was a very “dated” movie. Don’t get me wrong. While I did appreciate the visualization of the Black Panther ethos and the power of the ensemble cast, and Michael B. Jordan as a bad guy is fascinating to watch. However, this whole story would have been more powerful if they had done it ten years ago.
It’s 2018, we’ve had Black superheroes, Latinx superheroes, African mythology, Indigenous mythology, and BIPOC ensemble blockbuster casts since the mid ’90s. Heck, for the last decade when most people think of Spider-Man, they think of Miles Morales, not Peter Parker.
I called my grandfather on the way home to complain, “This movie was supposed to be a cathartic life experience and instead it was just entertaining.” Suddenly, over the phone I could hear my granddad tear up. Then he said, “Baby, it’s so beautiful how privileged you are.”
When he was my age, the idea that a billion dollar blockbuster film, directed by a black person, featuring a predominantly black cast, about a nation in Africa with technology far behind any western country, would be considered “behind the times” is astounding. When he was my age the USA was an apartheid state promoting stories to justify inequality not rectify it.
Today, the black panther party is a celebrated American institution, but in my grandfather’s time they were considered a fringe group or an enemy of the state.
Once the press exposed the unconstitutional, government sanctioned, terrorism of the FBI, CIA and law enforcement directed at civil rights leaders and black communities, the Panthers became national heroes. It was because of them that Nixon’s war on drugs was abandoned by lawmakers.
My Grandfather believes that without this type of journalism, Black communities would’ve been criminalized by those policies. That seems like a stretch to me, but what would life look like for Black people today if that war had been fully waged?
I can’t imagine thriving black cities like Compton, Baltimore or Ferguson having been impoverished ghettos ravaged by a predatory capitalism and predatory policing. I can’t imagine the violent possibilities that he warned of, like children being gunned down in their neighborhood just for walking home.
However, my Grandfather comes from a violent time….I guess he had some precedent. JFK once said; “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” My grandfather’s generation survived violence and decided to choose peace.
After I got off the phone with him, I ate samosas, drank Matcha green tea, and stayed up all night studying, feeling thankful to live in a country where emancipated, inclusive public journalism is as important as the right to vote. Making peaceful change normal and violent change unnecessary.
Maybe in an America starved for positive images of black stories, characters and bodies, Black Panther the movie would have been revolutionary. But in my America where these stories and images are plentiful Black Panther is just entertaining.
