Originally Posted by
chief12d
Wakanda is so painfully isolationist because that is the story writers want to tell. It's a narrative tool to prop up T'Challa and make his attempts to be a global hero all the more powerful. The king of a hidden country trying to do good for the whole world has a much better thematic touch than a king of a nation that has always been open doing the same. It's not supposed to make a bunch of sense, it's supposed to highlight T'Challa and his attempts to reverse that ideology. Same goes for most superhero kings like Aquaman and Black Bolt, that duality is there to make them more interesting characters.
And since we've moved on from Wakanda's debut I'd argue T'challa has made a decent degree of progress. Other books have referenced Wakanda trading with the outside world, characters from other franchises have studied in the Golden City, Wakandan schools have appeared at international schooling events, etc. There's still a lot of progress to be made but at the end of the day, Wakandan isolationism is intrinsic to the mythos because it's what makes T'challa more compelling and therefore will never be fully extinguished.
And from a more meta standpoint, Wakanda's isolationism is supposed to be the inversion of actual African history. So rather than having been conquered and exploited by European powers, Wakanda prospered in isolation and surpassed them in technological and spiritual knowledge. I highly doubt that the pan-African notion of Wakandans helping other Africans factored into the mind of Stan Lee when he first developed the concept so Wakanda exists in that awkward middleground where black folks admire its accomplishments but are left wondering why they didn't do more. iirc, Hudlin touched on this by having Wakanda do some covert work during the Atlantic slave trade. And didn't Coates have Wakanda meeting and arming African Americans (DOS) to support their communities in The Crew? It could be argued that they could've done more (though I doubt 18th century Wakanda could stop a slave trade happening on the other side of the continent) but it's not like they did absolutely nothing.