searching for Wakanda

You’ll forgive me if it takes me awhile to digest the new Black Panther and the new Wakanda. When I was a kid I read the Black Panther comic books and Wakanda was portrayed as a jungle.

Now, thanks to the new woke Marvel, it is the most technologically advanced civilization on the planet. Unrivaled by any white, Asian or Hispanic on the globe. And certainly devoid of any of those aforementioned races. Literally 100% black.

But I guess diversity is overrated right?

I was curious as to why the change, so I did what everyone curious person does these days; I went to Youtube.

For the last five weeks I’ve been watching two or three videos a night about Africa. Sites like Fearless and Far and Indigo Traveller visit dozens of African counties to give viewers, from the comfort of their own couch, an inside look at how they live and how their societies function. I wanted to figure out which of these countries was the inspiration for Wakanda. Which of these countries’ cultures would provide the impetus to change Wakanda from a primitive jungle nation to the most impressive country in the world.

One early map shows Wakanda in northeastern Africa, near Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, another one places it between Sudan in the north and Democratic Republic of the Congo in the south, while another puts it just north of Tanzania and exactly at Rwanda. Luckily there are plenty of educational videos about those seven countries so I dove right in.

The Marvel webpage on Wakanda states “Education is highly valued in the Wakandan culture and was viewed as a fundamental building block to ancient Wakandans. The nation has one of the highest literacy rates on the planet.”

Hmmm… when I compare and contrast that to Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Rwanda it’s obvious they aren’t quite as devoted to education.

The Marvel site goes on to say “Wakanda has a universal public health system paid largely from taxation. Wakanda’s entire population has equal access to health care services. The nation has one of the highest life expectancy rates on the planet.” (It even goes on to state that Wakanda has the cure for cancer but chooses not to share it with the rest of the world)

Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Rwanda? Not so much.

And the aforementioned technology? “Wakanda’s technology developed entirely independently of that of the rest of the world due to them remaining in isolation. Their computer technology is so advanced that it’s almost impossible to hack. However, they have taken time to learn the technology of the rest of the world, allowing them to hack any external computer system. The Wakandans do not use fossil fuels, even though their land is rich in resources. Instead they utilize a variety of eco-friendly alternative sources such as solar, hydrogen and geothermal. Wakandan scientists split the atom almost a century before the rest of the world.”

Wow. They are so much better than we are at everything. As you might imagine, as I watched the earnest hosts walk through the various African countries presented, I was a bit perplexed. Each one was more impoverished, corrupt, violent and backwards than the next. Each one strikingly similar to the original jungle Wakanda as presented in the comic books of my day.

And oh, by the way, if Wakanda is this super-civilization, why didn’t it help stop the Hutu ethnic majority in Rwanda from murdering 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority, in 1994 or donate some food to Ethiopia in 1983 when upwards of 1.2 million people starved to death?

Why won’t they share the cure for cancer?

The woke always have an agenda. Marvel and DC are in the grips of this stupidity and there seems to be no end in sight. They have presented Wakanda as the perfect society. So much better than the Western world.

But why?

Why couldn’t they present it as how a typical African country actually is?

It’s not a coincidence. What is their end game?

Do they believe that if they present black culture as inherently superior to all other races, that suddenly blacks around the world will stop burning everything they touch to the ground? Or is it simple appeasement? Like the people who wrote Black Lives Matter on their boarded up storefronts in the hopes the mob wouldn’t loot them.

We saw how that turned out.

I don’t have the answer (I’m certainly not bright enough for that task). I’ve now watched an endless number of documentaries and firsthand accounts of these countries, each one of them with plenty of untapped resources and potential, each one a bigger clusterfuck than their neighbor. I simply don’t get it.

Why do we continue to celebrate failed cultures? They certainly don’t talk much about Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, or Rwanda during Black History Month. But I’m sure Wakanda will be mentioned plenty. Are we really this cowardly to ignore the truth? If so, it is to the detriment of everyone involved, particularly those struggling in African countries.

Will I be going to see the new Black Panther movie?

No thanks.