Tag Archives: consumerism
Black Panther Serves To Inspire In A World Built On Fantasy
I hold my clenched fists across my heaved chest and as I summon the power of a thousand Afrakan warriors my arms become heavy like the hammer of the mighty Thor times two. I am ready to pound the hell out of every white racist and race destroying Black person that crosses my path. I know it’s just a fantasy but I feel exhilarated, inspired, and powerful. Now I’m ready to take on the world.
Every dream begins as fantasy, an exaggeration of the actual outcome. There is no explanation for it. That’s just the way the human mind works. But if you think that it’s foolish to dwell on fantasy, who can tell me that god is not a fantasy? Yet he/she/it is the key drivers of the human psyche, providing hope, inspiration, and courage to billions to alleviate their fears of a hostile world. God has been insufficient however therefore; Black people still continue to search for any form of inspiration we can find.
That is why when a movie like Black Panther comes along to offer inspiration in the form of a fantasy, Black people have responded with overwhelming support. In fact, I have never seen Black people all across the globe get so excited about a movie before. Like Trekkies or Star Wars fanatics who get dressed up in fan gear to attend a showing, Black Panther supporters came out in all sorts of Afrakan themed attire. The result is that the movie has now broken sales records in numerous countries and is predicted to become one of the top grossing movies of all time.
In the months prior to its premiere, anticipation for Black Panther never wavered, it grew bigger by the day, which was a good sign for its creators, Marvel and Disney, that they had a hit on their hands. Personally, after witnessing the blind obsession on social media over what I saw as no more than a fantasy, I wrote it off. My consciousness does not allow me to get swept up in consumerism, which is a factor in all movie and product debuts.
So here we are, a week after the premiere and Black Panther has actually lived up to the hype but even it wasn’t a good movie in terms of its entertainment value, just the representation of Afrakans in positive positions of power was good enough for most Black folks. A new term has even been coined called “Afro Futurism” to classify movies in which Black people are set in leading positions of power.
On the other hand, Black Panther has got every major news organization scrambling to understand its success. They are wondering how Black Panther, a lesser known figure in the Marvel Universe is able to outsell all other movies with major characters such as Iron Man, X-Men, Thor, Spider Man, Captain America, and Avengers. Its success came because Black people were given a chance to Direct, Act, and create a story about us for us. The result is a product that inspires greatness within us.
Main-stream media is hearing from us how just seeing other Black people in positions of power is inspirational yet many of them are still confused. They say, “but it’s just a movie, a fantasy”. What they refuse to acknowledge is the power of inspirational figures even though they draw inspiration from statues and portraits of Jesus and movies about Super-man, James Bond, and Luke Sky-Walker.
Those inspirations make them feel that they can dictate the policies of the world, travel to the Stars, or become super sleuths that solve complected crimes. For us, Black Panther serves to inspire in a world built on fantasy. What world am I referring to? I’m not referring to the world of Wakanda; I’ am referring to the world we face every time we open our front doors.
How To Fight Oppression
Oppression can be defined as the active denial of liberty and pursuit of happiness by one group of people over another. The oppressors are mostly of a higher class or dominant culture and race while the oppressed are usually of a lower class and minor race. Most people of minor races living within the culture of a dominant race often have to fight to fit in because it is human nature for people to support other people who are more like themselves.
Race and culture favoritism may range from something that is minor to full blown racism at the extreme. These types of oppressions will never change on their own therefore it is the responsibility of the oppressed to recognize oppression in its many forms and act to either protect ourselves against it or act to end it outright if they ever wish to live free and happy as minorities in a dominant society.
Most non-white races may claim to have been oppressed at one time or another but none has experienced the sustained and documented record of oppression as that of the Black AfRAkan race. Throughout history we have and still are being exploited by Europeans and Arabs for the resources of our lands in the form of colonization and for our labor in the form of slavery. Race mixing has colored the exploitation in many aspects to further bind AfRAkans to foreign cultures of all sorts.
Today, many Black people are so brainwashed as a result of colonization and slavery that they don’t even recognize that they are still being actively oppressed. They accept the linear understanding of reality that they are thought and think that they had no culture or understanding of life and reality before Europeans thought them how to function in his reality.
While most Black people acknowledge that oppression exists there are some Black oppression deniers who are blinded by religion which teaches them that their hardships in life are really just tests of faith by their illusionary god. They use the benefits of the sacrifices that others have made to better themselves financially but instead of acknowledging revolutionaries like Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and DR. King they attribute their success to their own hard work.
Those of us who do recognize that Black people are actively being oppressed by dominant cultures and races are the ones who are taking steps to increase our awareness of the world around us. Fortunately, all people; oppressors and the oppressed, want the same basic things in life so we don’t need to look for any hidden secret of how to fight oppression. We all want to be happy, healthy, and successful in life. Oppressors simply go about achieving those things at the expense of the people they oppress.
For years many of us have been staging our own personal boycotts of businesses and organizations that do not respect Black people or that keep Black people enslaved in consumerism. We are the ones who get accused by other Blacks of being “all talk, no action” because we aren’t in the streets. We fight oppression in different ways through education, awareness, and support of our own cultures and businesses. We spread information about businesses and organizations that serve to maintain a system of direct and indirect oppression against Black people.
We also know that Western cultures are built on capitalism therefore; the most effective means of fighting Western style oppression is through economics. It is the #1 reason why they exploited Black people and lands centuries ago. One of the most successful periods in the struggle against oppression in America was during the 1960 when Martin Luther King JR took Black people out of cowering in churches to marching in the streets, holding sit-ins in white owned businesses, and boycotting national corporations.
Why do we think that the times have changed so much that these measures are obsolete and won’t work today? Sure the struggle against oppression is hard because Black people work for and depend on many of the oppressors businesses so they will be financially affected by boycotts but let us not be foolish in thinking that we are smarter than our leaders of the past or that things that worked in the past cannot work today.
All institutions and corporations are run by people who all want to be successful and happy. None like the uncertainty of economic turmoil so they will bend under pressure. At the same time we must support Black owned businesses and stop the crabs-in-a-barrel mentality that makes us not want to see other Black people succeed while personally we are not.
