Quote Originally Posted by Ororo101 View Post
I can see your point here and in many ways I can agree. But if Wakandans are Wakandan first then I think it’s a bit distasteful for them to not realize that they are also Africans, second and Black People third. Isolationism may have kept them safe and hidden from the world and it’s horrors, but while they advanced and used their Vibranium privilege(yes it is privilege, they didn’t earn it, they were just lucky enough to be born on that rock as you said) to further their own society, everyone else who looked like them was being enslaved, tortured, and demonized the world over. So at what point does self preservation just become self involvement? And beyond that a Nation-State with deeply engrained cultural xenophobia?

How would that look in the real world? Would we as non-Wakandan born. Black people support really a country like that? That had the power to aid so much suffering and chose not to? Genuine questions that I ask myself as a fan of the BP franchise and I think others should as well. The movie did a great job making Killmonger a sympathetic villain for this very reason.
Wakanda doesn't care if you like Wakanda lol. The don't care if "we" non Wakandan black people give a shit about them. Just like I am pretty sure "insert real life African nation" gives a shit about the opinion of me, Florida black man, cares about them. They don't care if USA likes them, they don't care if China likes then, they don't care if Nigeria likes them, they don't care if Azania, Niganda, Atlantis, ect likes them.

Wakanda is supposed to be weird. If that meteor lands in Britain, they are using it to conquer the known world. That meteor lands in Japan, they are going to use to spread their empire. If the meteor lands in Rawanda, they either use it to conquer or they get that shit stolen by "insert nation" and they use it to conquer. Any "real" nation uses the magic rock to conquer or be conquered for it.

Wakanda is weird because they got the super meteor and just went, "cool, leave us alone, " and defended the hell out of their land and hid.

The movie did make Killmonger somewhat sympathetic... but Wakanda isn't supposed to be perfect. Wakanda is a "utopia" for Wakandans. Whether that is right or not is up to the reader. comic T'challa helps. MCU T'challa was unsure what to do and ended up being convinced to help (it was huge he even considered it as a king, it wasn't even looked at as an option from what we saw of T'chaka).

"Should we help anyone else' is central to every "super power" in the world. Wakanda shouldn't be exempt for that just because it feeds into some mythical "black/africans are different" narrative.

Quote Originally Posted by chief12d View Post
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.
Nicely said.

People forget that T'challa is the character here, not "Wakanda." Wakandans exist to prop up and tell stories for T'challa. This whole thing revolves around T'challa. Too many people think T'challa is the stepping stone instead of the top of the mountain here