It is no secret that Black Panther has been not only an American success but also a global success in terms of box office revenue. Black Panther is on pace to reach $1 billion in total box office theaters revenue worldwide and is also on the cusp of reaching the half billion mark in U.S. sales after three straight weeks of topping the movie box offices in American theaters. You can read more on that from this post from Deadline just a day ago titled Black Panther Crushes $763 million WW Box Office; $1B Coming Closer Into It's Grasp. Black Panther figuratively devouring the money market world wide in theater sales to shreds. Yet, even though the film has been a financial hit it is also a cultural phenomenon and portrait of a history rarely told in terms of how the ethnic, social, and economic systems in the Western World have been shaped due to trade, slave, trade, and colonization's affects of many different nations, cultures, and individuals in those areas of the planet today. With so much that is able to be gleaned from watching and reflecting on the film there are questions that continue to reverberate in my mind and soul and most of them center around the central villain and arguable main character in Erik Killmonger. I continue to ask myself, "oh dear brother, how did you get to this place? What was done to you? What even did I do to you? Where could I have prevented you from turning into the person you are? Where am I just like you as I sit here writing this blog?"
The introspective questions can go on and on.
I truthfully still do not know what to call Erik. Is he N'Jadaka or is that too ethnic or a name that never really was his since never lived the life of an African in his home land? Should I call him Erik Stevens or is that too domestic, not ethnic enough, and not truly telling of his life and formation as a person? Should I call him Erik Killmonger? That would be the appropriate choice since he is the "villain" of the film and so name as savage as Killmonger appropriately suits. But the issue with that name is that it makes it too easy to demonize him as just a bad guy, with no real reason for the terrible things he does. Killmonger makes it easier to disassociate with Erik, a broken and scared human being that wants to fix, avenge, and make sense of what he has become; of what has been done to him. Among the many stories that the film Black Panther exposes is that history is indeed written and preserved by the winners or the more influential, and in the case of the Erik Stevens out there, it can and does continually abuse, warp, and crush the souls of people today. Factors good and bad that have shaped the Western world, American culture, and the real life experiences of billions of individuals today did not just end yesterday, 50 years ago, 300 years ago, or even 1,000. The fact that there are over one billion Africans and African descendants scattered across the globe today known as the African diaspora is evidence of the remanent of History's dramatic and lasting affects on the plant in regards to slave trade and human exploitation. The scars of this reality are deep, enduring, and still effect the lives of these individuals today. Erik's scars still are visual in my mind.
The scars even at times are haunting.
Erik's scars are more painful to look at than the ones I remember seeing on the back of Lavar Burton's character in Roots of Kunta Kinte back. Why? Because those wounds were not self inflicted, they were done to him. In the case of Erik Killmonger the internal externally inflicted wounds of being abandoned by his people coupled with the constant violence, ignorance of knowing your ancestral history of being black, and system issues of inequality in America Erik has decided to make the internal wounds external with placing scars on his body for every person he has killed. Basically, Erik Stevens has been so abused that he now inflicts wounds on himself. History does not just stay in the past. It affects the present and the future. The pain associated with the darkness of the African slave trade stays with many people today in the reality of just not knowing who we are and where we come from; who we come from. This issue of self scaring is also just a human issue in dealing with pain. Some do self destructive activities like over drinking, being in constant bad relationships, getting into a constant state of being on opiates and drugs to stay "level", or even perhaps in getting certain tattoos. Though there are endless reasons for why someone would tattoo themselves, one reason is to deal with life's pain that is manifested in the brokenness and darkness of the actions that make up history. Tattoos for some people are a way to own and give redemption to our internal scars. It gives some individuals power and a way to move forward from the pain of identity abuse from the outside world. This is no doubt what Erik Stevens has done with the self inflicted wounds he has put on his body in a slit of his flesh for every person he has killed. By the way, many of those scars likely came from him being a soldier and following orders from the U.S. military. Marvel's story with him being a soldier is a subtle yet very sharp stab to how the government enslaves, scars, and completely breaks so many men and women over the course of history do to war and exploiting individuals to fight these wars. Erik Stevens no doubt did some pretty messed up things all under the orders of the military that give him the title of Killmonger, the warped sense of self, broken soul, and self inflicted scars he has and showcases in the film. His scars say, "I am still a slave. I am still being used. And I am broken."
A weekend ago me and my wife went to visit an elderly church member that had been sick and in and out of the hospital for an extended amount of time. I will just call him "Barry". Barry is at least in his 70's I would guess due to the look of him and the fact that he served in the Korean War. We went to visit him at the local veterans hospital in Houston. It is a hospital completely dedicated to serving military veterans. As a disclaimer I just want to say that I really dislike hospitals like most people. They remind me of everything scary about the human condition that is not charming: the death, the dying, the hurting, and the mortality of us all. But after hearing that Barry was there and that it would had been convenient to just swing by on our way back home from two church visits on a busy Sunday morning I decided to go. As we walked in the door the word that can best describe the impression from first off was depressing. The hospital seemed a little less cleanly kept than others that serve the average Houstonian. I have a bit of a cashe` to go by since I have been in a few hospitals in Houston to visit friends over the years. Not only was it a little less clean but it also seemed less equipped and less well lit as well. It just seemed darker and as if the equipment was a bit "hand-me-down" in its condition. Aside from all of this the most memorable part of our visit with Barry was the look of the veterans walking through out the isles. A lot of them looked like they were homeless. They looked like people I had walked or driven by many times on the Houston streets that were asking for money, some of them wearing military veteran hats, jackets, or vets. I remember seeing many a homeless person on the street wearing these things and sometimes thinking, "Is he really a military veteran or is he just trying to get my sympathy?" After my visit to this veterans hospital I think I know my answer. Really a vet. This hospital felt like it was a place for the forgotten and abused to go. Felt more like a morgue than a place where people come to get healed. It was understandable why Barry was happy and surprised to see us.
Hurt people hurt people.
Lately I have taking a new (or renewed) ear to listening to certain hip-hop artists. I will spare you the names of who so that it won't perhaps force judgment upon me or maybe even a congratulatory nod. I do not know really why I have started listening again. I used to listen to hip hop a lot before I became a Christian. Then when I became a Christian at 16 years old I was so wanting to grasp for a new identity and something to walk into that I forsook a lot of my former life, and world. I said goodbye passionately and with what I thought a reverent and sanctified zeal to rap and hip hop and I said hello to contemporary Christian music and alternative Christian music. I was basically adopting the music of my friends at the time that I was also adopting as I began to walk into this new life as a Christian. Little did I know until reflecting more now in these recent years at 34 years old that I was also unintentionally letting go of my ethnicity and basically becoming more of something else, of someone else. I remember even just generating a liking for genres of music that I never even liked before become a Christian. I began listening to alternative rock, pop, and even singer song writer music. I did this for years, over a decade and a half. I don't know why I did this. Partly because I was trying to identify with this new life and world of being a Christian and reconciling that with the fact that most of my new found friends were white. Part of it was because I actually did like the music I was adopting. I did not like it more, I just liked it also. It was new, like being a new person in Christ.
The mind makes associations to deal with things it has never experienced before. Fraud called these "schemas". These new mind structures we make can be helpful but they can also be unhealthy. I did not realize that in making a new schema for what it meant to be a "new creation" that I was also via the associations I had at the time and being so young that I was not necessarily becoming more like Jesus but becoming southern evangelical or white evangelical. Now, I love white evangelicals. I love white people. I love people. But why didn't I become a black evangelical? Or a black christian? Or perhaps the better question is why couldn't I? What was keeping me back? What was I not able to see due to hidden history and miss told history? Where were the examples around me that were willing to be black and christian, or just black at that time? Black in a way that was worth wanting to embrace and be proud of. Not blacks that hid themselves behind a predominant culture due to shame or a desire to fit in, get the fringe benefits, or even just survive. I can not remember many. I know some now and it has helped my soul. I needed an answer to my skin and what it meant and I needed one that would affirm me instead of tear me down or make me feel less.
I needed the same things Erik Stevens needed, and that he did not get. This is why so many blacks identify with his identity break down and rebuild so much and the anger, the rage, the confusion, and the hurt of it all. Erick Killmonger is a dark and empowering way of gaining identity that a lot of blacks so desperately need and do not get good options to. Who wants to be a professional basketball player at 30 still? What about a black child that can not sing or dance, who are they? What does it mean to be black and one that speaks properly? After watching Black Panther me, my wife, and two friends went to eat. I was the only one that was black in the group. I confessed to them that I really identified more with the villain than the hero. I got Erik because he spoke like me and needed an identity like I did at one point in time. I saw the empathetic remorse and pain on their faces, my friends, my white friends as I shared. I know my wife understood. We are in many ways a new race together. We have fused each others lives into one. She felt my pain and cried along with me during the film. She understood. So, I get why I started listening to hip hop again because of this too. Hip hop is not just rhyming to a beat or bragging about stuff and materialism. It is about hurt people talking about their pain. It is about hurt people venting. It is a catharsis for those who need to also release and an invitation to be empowered for those that need to be built back up after the world has hurt them. Interestingly, hip hop is one of the most popular musical genres for this also. White middle class to rich kids to black poor kids and every class in between I have heard blasting hip hop music in their cars as they drive past me in the busy Houston streets. Must mean that a lot of people are hurting and that a lot of people need to release and get built back up again. A lot of people want to be black, or at least the idea of it. So I am listening in more to what hip hop artists and what I believe to be modern day prophets are saying to me. I am listening to their pain and due to me living it and seeing it around me for the first time in my life in vivid ways over the past few years I can finally hear them. I understand now that they are speaking about a condition that needs to be lifted but that weighs them down. I understand that they are angry and want a better life. I even at times get angry with them as I listen. I even sometimes weep.
One of my fears that I have is being robbed when I am home. I fear it more now since moving to a major city that has all the things all major cities (and not so major and small cities) do. I think of a scenario sometimes of me just sitting on the couch and hearing glass break from windows and kids flooding into my home. I always imagine them being young black. Mostly because that would be the typical person in our neighborhood, which is mover 90% black. A young Erik Stevens or even a younger Howard Thomas? A Howard that did not grow up in a middle class family and with a mother and father in the home? A Howard that did not have male role models to guide me into my adulthood and faith, regardless of their race? In this thought I think of what I would do if this happened, if I was being robbed. Would I grab for a weapon? Would I try to kill them? Would I even resist at all and just let them take whatever they wanted? Let them everything? Hurt people hurt people. These kids would be breaking in because they thought they needed what temporary provision they would find. Temporary relief from the pain and neglect. Would it be worth it then, to stop them? I do not have much to give them and what I have is not worth a life to keep. But again, hurt people hurt people. Hurt people need. I believe when I think of this fantasy scenario and what it means to be poor, used, enslaved, and conflicted I get more and more why God could not stay way. Why he had to be with us, walk with us, feel our sickness, experience our mortality, be labeled a sinner (thug, stupid, poor, nigger, spick, chink, fag) along with the not so fortunate or hurting people. Why he also came not to just back and judge but to bring a solution in walking with, dying for, and giving to the poor. Not just the poor in materials but the poor in spirit. I get it more now. I see why Jesus while on the cross said, "Lord, forgive them. They do not understand what they do!" I guess he was saying in another way that hurt people hurt people. So, with all of that said I wonder if I would just say the same to God if I was robbed while home now. I wonder if I would just say, "Lord forgive them, they do not know what they do. Hurt people hurt people."
We all do.
I really do want to believe in Black Panther, in T'Challa. I want to believe that there are people that see hurt people and that go to them with their heart, hands, and resources instead of just sittig back behind comforts, logic, cold hearts, and statistics. Statistics that do not tell the whole story. Cold hearts that never really cared anyway. I want to believe that a Wakanda today would move to action to help the poor. The poor in all ways. A Wakanda that understands that when we look at the poor we are seeing ourselves, our human condition. A Wakanda that understands that everything we have is a gift and was given and that we have no right to judge. Our vary lives were a gift. I hope and pray that this Wakanda does exist and that it it will move to help and reveal grace. And not just a Wakanda but an Asgard, a Shire, a Wayne Corp, a Stark Industries, an Avenger Initiative, a government, a church, a community, a family, a person. Any race. Any people. I want to believe it. Every day I pray that the Erik Killmonger in me gets stabbed deep in the heart by the T'Challa that has been given me by Jesus. I pray that I am not overcome by the demons. The demons created by this broken world. I pray to be a part of the solution and not the problem, though I can have many excuses to be either. I pray because, as I have said, hurt people hurt people. Wakanda forever.
Howard Lee Thomas III is a writer and inner city minister living in Houston, TX. You can follow him at @howardlee58 or @howie_thetitan on Twitter. Or @howardlee58 on Instagram.
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