Wakanda For Never

Marvel and the 1619 Project share something in common - both are based on fan fiction.

I would agree that there are historical contributions made by black Americans that have not taken center stage in our American story – but that isn’t necessarily a slight.

There are multitudes of examples of men and women of all races and creeds who fell to the cutting room floor when history is written. Teaching history in schools makes it necessary to use the Reader’s Digest process, it has to be condensed to the most important aspects. That doesn’t mean the contributions that didn’t make the cut are unimportant, it is just that teaching American history for an hour a day during three 180 day school years (most schools teach it in 5th, 8th and 11th grades) isn’t a lot of instruction time.

So things get left out as a matter of available time.

How many people will use Wifi today without knowing that actress Hedy Lamarr invented technology that made wireless connectivity possible?

Before Elon Musk named his car company Tesla, how many knew about Nicola Tesla?

In my own situation, I learned a hundred times the amount of American history I was taught in formal classes outside those classes through reading to satisfy my own curiosity.

I was in a "conversation" with a black American on Twitter yesterday. He was challenging my response about the 1619 project being fiction by claiming that because I said it was flawed, I was denying the contributions of blacks. His basic position was that what Nicole Hannah-Jones wrote was not what she wrote and America was built solely on the backs of slaves from Africa and whites should just pay up.

I continued engagement until he started calling me "champ" and "klansman" and when I disengaged due to the futility, I thanked him for his service (he claimed to have retired from the US Marines) - he said, "I guess the truth hurts."

It was then I realized that there is no way history could have been taught that would satisfy these people – not even if black Americans were given the “Wakanda” treatment, that being their contributions treated as superior to those of all other races while completely ignoring the entirely human failings of their ancestors.

The 1619 cabal of guilt laden white progressives and black supremacists will accept nothing less than unconditional surrender of Western civilization.

The 1619 people are unburdened by the sins of their own ancestors as the seek capital punishment for everyone else. They ignore tens of thousands of years of humans enslaving other humans, regardless of race, to begin history at a point (1619) that supports their narrative, that America was exclusively built on the backs of slaves and that America's founding principles are illegitimate because slavery existed after the Declaration of Independence.

They refuse to accept that every nation on the face of the earth struggled with slavery – many ancestral lands of those who claim connection to Africa still do to this day - and black Africans were not the only race to be enslaved in the history of the world – not even in the history of America.

I fear for our future because the situation we have allowed ourselves to drift into is one where the only end possible contemplates a binary solution, either the Western world surrenders unconditionally or the 1619 cabal does, and neither of those are appealing or lasting.

My wife and I watched Wakanda Forever tonight. Me, mostly out of curiosity, my wife was looking for entertainment.

As Marvel movies go, it was average, but it was interesting.

The movie features two racially monolithic cultures/civilizations, both of which live in harmony with nature and are allegedly superior to Western civilization (aka white European), and see America as a threat – and of course, the script writers reinforce that America, at least the white part, is the enemy. While the racially monolithic civilizations (one Mayan, the other African) share a common enemy, they have different motivations – the fictitious Mayan civilization was born in opposition to colonization and enslavement by Spaniards, but as far as I can tell, the Wakandan Africans have never been enslaved having hid themselves from the world. Their fear, which seems unfounded since they are so superior, is that they WILL be conquered and the source of their technology and power, the Vibranium, will be taken.

But rather than fighting the evil Americans, they wind up fighting each other.

Of course, even though the Wakandans, win and they and subsea dwelling Mayans end up as friends united against the outside world, they remain racially segregated with the Wakandans on top and both still segregated from the world at large.

I assume Wakanda is to American blacks as Atlantis is to Western whites. The difference is, of course, there is at least some historical evidence Atlantis – or something like it – existed .

But Wakanda is fan fiction (somebody had to tell the USDA that Wakanda wasn’t real - for about 6 months back in 2019, Wakanda was listed as a Free Trade Partner on the Official USDA website).

Fan fiction is something Wakanda and the 1619 mentality have in common.

It is easy to demonize the land of the free because they were imperfect through presentism – comparing then to now, using our current sensibilities and 20/20 hindsight – but to do so is to forget just how unfree the rest of the world was at that time. In historical context, America was a noble experiment that could have easily failed. It was a huge risk to hearth and home to put this nation on a path to freedom for all, including slaves.

This would seem theatrical of it weren’t so serious. There are people willing to destroy this nation based on this belief that Wakanda really exists, that black Americans are superior. This black supremacy is every bit as dangerous as white supremacy, and just as there was back in the heyday of “white power”, there are black Americans intent upon starting a race war.

They might just do it.