It's been a while since I've written on this lonely webzone, but I have returned to my mountain fortress here on Lokepoet.Weebly.com to reflect on my enlightening foray into the writings of Ta Nehisi Coates. I would assume that Ta Nehisi Coates would need no introduction; if you don't know him, I urge you to read his writing for The Atlantic (several links will be provided below), one of his books, or some of his writing for Marvel Comics (!). I first discovered him on The Atlantic, reading his wonderful essay "The Case for Reparations," where he lays out his case for why African-American's are owed restitution for the atrocities committed on them and their ancestors. His logic was sound, balanced beside the seemingly forgotten reality that reparations were paid to Japanese-Americans who were personally or whose grandparents were illegally placed in internment camps during the later stages of World War II. Coates' writing was powerful to me in that he was aggressive, but maintained his cool, never resorting to vitriol as he laid out the horrors of slavery, Jim Crow, and the modern era of police shootings and predatory loans that predominately target African-American's living in urban areas as a result of restrictive housing policies in the post-civil rights era. I had no knowledge of the reparations paid to Japanese-American's, which frankly recast the reparations debate in a different light to me. It went from a topic that was so silly to me that it merited the attention it currently gets (which is none as of the writing of this post), to something I routinely think about and wonder about. His next article, provocatively labelled "The First White President," was the one that made me understand why Coates was so popular. In "The First White President," he laid out America's brutal political emphasis on race as a motivating factor, employing quotes from past senators, Confederates, and intellectuals, and connecting them with Donald Trump's political campaign and the developments of the day, such as Charlottesville. He excoriated my content, white perspective by dredging up the words of Theodore Bilbo, a senator from the '30's. His endorsing of lynchings as a tactic to suppress the black vote weren't a far cry from our idiot president calling the KKK and other assorted racists in Charlottesville (one of whom ran a woman over with a car, just in case you're living under a rock) "Very fine people." I next read Coates' book, "We Were Eight Years in Power." By this point, I had dropped politics from my poetry; I couldn't handle the stress of thinking about the sad state of affairs and engaging with it in my art. Maybe that is an admission of weakness on my part. Either way, I was drawn to Coates more than any other writer ruminating on the Trump administration. "We Were Eight Years in Power" consisted of the eight essays he had written during the Obama years, with an essay written before each one introducing his current feelings on them. Many of them were critical of Obama's mostly race-neutral tenure as president, and dealt with issues such as mass incarceration, police brutality, and zoning policies, but most, if not all, referred back to his title, which was originally uttered by Reconstructionist era politicians. The horror of the goals of Reconstruction for the Confederacy states was of an integrated society. The fact that black people could ever be equal citizens, or worse, someday in power, was seen as the ultimate taboo, which communicates with the term "Good Negro Government." Obama's reign was one of optimism, and maybe too much pragmatism, especially when America's response was Donald Trump. Needless to say, I decided that the time had come to jump into Coates' Black Panther book. In his writings, Coates railed against the claims of black nationalists, who believed that in Mother Africa, all black people were kings and queens. In his view, all societies, Utopian, dystopian, or otherwise, had winners and losers. What would a man, as plugged into the modern black psyche and with as much to say as Coates did, do with a character like Black Panther? Understand, T'Challa (Black Panther's alter ego) is not like other superheroes. Like Thor, he isn't even an American citizen. As a prominent black superhero, he has little to add to the discourse on race relations in this country, unlike Black Lightning, Steel, or Sam Wilson. He is a literal god-king of a fictional African country, which just so happens to be the most advanced country on the planet. His mythology reads like a tongue in cheek fantasy dreamed up by a white guy in the '60's because, well, it is. The Panther's original appearance, as just one of the retarded villains cooked up to fight the Fantastic Four, reads like an homage to a laughable pulp story where the hero visits the spooky, savage country of Africa. The Wakandan monarch invites Reed Richards to his land so he can hunt him, "Most Dangerous Game" style, while native Wakandans stand around, wielding spears despite being surrounded by advanced tech drawn by Jack Kirby's wondrous pencils and colored in the usual beautiful, LSD inspired style of the day. The Black Panther, despite all of the hype and excitement for his upcoming movie, has never been a popular character. In the world of comics, this means that no one wants to read his comics, which means that Black Panther and his fantastical world and cast of characters are all reduced to bit players in whatever stories other writers are crafting for their own books. When Coates' book opens, our hero has recently retaken his throne in Wakanda, after being forced to flee the country while his sister fell facing off against Thanos and his Black Order. Namor, king of Atlantis and fellow B-lister who never gets his own book, had flooded part of Wakanda, and T'Challa was caught working with him on some cross-over or whatever, which caused more damage to his name, to the point where T'Challa's own father disowned him, Force Ghost style. This causes a seething wave of discontent with the Black Panther cult throughout Wakanda, from which rises two competing terrorist organizations, The People and another led by the Panthers warrior women, the Dora Milaje. It was as byzantine and puzzling an open to a new book as any I've encountered, but one that left me utterly baffled. What was Coates up to? More on that next time. LINKS! THE CASE FOR REPARATIONS THE FIRST WHITE PRESIDENT |