DICK'S SPORTING GOODS WILL NO LONGER SELL GUNS TO THOSE UNDER 21 YEARS OLD

And they'll refuse to sell those guns to too young men, regardless of state law.  This major sporting goods chain will also stop selling assault style rifles and high capacity magazines. 

Other businesses have cut ties with the NRA since the massacre in Florida on Valentines Day. But it is a major step for a gun seller to take steps toward gun control when most states and federal governments won't.

Feeling rebloggy

Dick’s Sporting Goods, one of America’s largest sporting goods retailers, is immediately ending its sales of assault-style weapons and high capacity magazines. They will also require customers buying firearms to be at least 21 years old.

The announcement was made Wednesday by Dick’s CEO Edward Stack on Good Morning America. Stack cited the discovery that the Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz, bought a shotgun at Dick’s prior to the attack. Though it wasn’t used in the shooting, it was enough to convince Stack that something had to change.

https://jezebel.com/dicks-sporting-goods-will-stop-selling-assault-style-ri-1823388092 

QUOTE OF THE DAY: TOXIC MASCULINITY

This is a reason to read up on TOXIC MASCULINITY all by itself. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity

Was ANNIHILATION Annihilated At The Box Office By Colorism?

I hear Annihilation was a good flick. But it's getting crushed at the box office. Nobody much is going to see it. I suggest to you the problem may be a combination of bad advertising and reinforcing ugly realities

1) All female leads only draws half the population most of the time, that's why the success of WONDER WOMAN was shocking
2) All female leads only draws half the population most of the time, that's why the success of THE HUNGER GAMES TRILOGY was shocking
3) All female leads only draws half the black population most of the time, that's one of the reasons GIRLS TRIP was shocking. 
4) I thought it was being advertised for NETFLIX debut for some reason
5) It came out the second week of BLACK PANTHER
6) None of lead actresses are OBVIOUSLY not-white at first glance. And Hollywood should start seeing this as a major advertising problem.

Again, the reason people were surprised by how well THE HUNGER GAMES and WONDER WOMAN did is because boys have been taught to not go see "chick flicks." That is, a lot of times a movie with all female leads has 50% of the population dismissing it. 

There are signs this is getting better. But we have to keep in mind that WONDER WOMAN, in particular, had patriarchal appeal

1. It had an unbelievably skinny, muscle-less actress playing the title role (as compared to a pale black ballerina I could name) 
2. Furthermore, though I enjoyed the movie, WONDER WOMAN was more Wonder Girlish than Wonder Womanish because it was an origin story that followed her out of childhood. 

This kinda means WONDER WOMAN was in her traditional naive, girlish  place in this movie. Men like that. Male movie reviewers viewed that positively.  Reviews are part of advertising. And men went to go see WONDER WOMAN too. 

ANNIHILATION doesn't look like WONDER WOMAN. The women are dressed in functional clothing that covers them head to toe. There's not a hint that any of the women will be girlish. This means men probably aren't going to this movie too much. But black and brown women will if they see black and brown women starring in the movie.

And when I saw the previews, I couldn't tell that anything but white and light chicks was in this movie.  And as it turns out Tessa Thompson was one of them.

ON THE COLORISM TIP

Thompson is usually a good actress. And maybe she's right in proclaiming herself a goddess. I even get vibes that she's a down home black girl too (If Janelle Monae likes her, it's all good right?)

HURRAH FOR TESSA!

SHE'S AWESOME

Even so, five or six decades of light-women representing damn near all of black womanhood outside the occasional slave flick ought to be enough for anybody.

I've followed Halle Berry for most of my adult life because she broke into white Hollywood projects where no black woman had gone before. She broke all kinds of glass ceilings. And I'm sure Vanessa Williams, Thandie Newton, Rosario Dawson, and the light girl actresses that took up all the romantic story lines in COSBY, A DIFFERENT WORLD, BLACKISH and GROWNISH did too. But in a post VIOLA in Shonda's HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER World

and a

post-Ryan Coogler's BLACK PANTHER World

it's time to say Tessa Tyler shaded actresses can represent black women in a movie ONLY IF there is another black woman in the movie that's about 20 shades darker. Woke black women want to see all black women succeed. But a lot of black women, my shade and much-much lighter, are starving to see Black women whom you can see are black instantly without having to look up A) pictures of the actress' parents B) how that actress chooses to identify

FOR EXAMPLE

• Mixed Meghan marrying Prince Harry should not be identified as "black" because she has chosen to identify as bi-racial. Since she knows who she is. That's her choice. 
• Halle Berry and President Barack Obama are black because that's how they choose to identify. 
• And I am black because my parents are black and I choose black, no matter how many "mulattos" are identified in my family tree. (Not that I really "chose" Hypo-descent chose for most of us prior to 21st century.)

That said, black women are starving to see obvious representations of themselves.

And I think the box office performance of BLACK PANTHER, HIDDEN FIGURES, and GIRLS TRIP proves this. This is why I think ANNIHILATION would have gone bust at the box office even if it hadn't come out right after BLACK PANTHER (silly rabbits). In fact, I'm a little worried about how A WRINKLE IN TIME. Except for problem #4, it has all the same problems as ANNIHILATION. It's coming out too close to BLACK PANTHER and all the female leads are very pale except for an elderly fairy played by OPRAH.

updated 2 27 18

STOP HOLDING YOURSELF BACK

Feeling Rebloggy

The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself. 

Saul Alinsky said that, and he was right. 

In almost every case, nothing is stopping you, nothing is holding you back but your own thoughts about yourself and about "how life is."  

Your personal freedom to experience yourself and life as you wish is not being limited. Step into your choices and stop telling yourself that you can't, when what you really mean is that you don't want other people to feel the way you think that are going to feel when they see you making the choices you really want to make. 

Got it?

 NDW

THIS IS WHAT IT TAKES TO CRUSH THE NRA AND CONGRESSIONAL SUPPORT OF WEAK GUN LAWS

1. Protests
2. Boycotts
3. Hit Em In The Wallet
4. Then you create an organization that shows up in courts and goes after lawmakers like Mother's Against Drunk Drivers did in the 1980s and 1990s. 

https://www.vox.com/2014/4/2/5572648/why-are-fewer-people-dying-in-car-crashes

In the 1980s I knew this white girl who had a white boyfriend who'd killed somebody "accidentally" while drunk driving. His brother and father had also killed one person each via drunk driving. And they were all walking around free, feeling a little guilty. 

M.A.D.D., organized by a mother that short circuited her grief over a dead child and changed it to action, put together an organization that changed an entire country's attitudes about drunk driving deaths as "accidents" over time. The laws changed when the citizens changed and became fed up.

The police and congress are not going to change anything unless we force them.

We're at step 3. And We need to move on to step 4 

1. Protests
2. Boycotts
3. Hit Em In The Wallet
4. Create an organization that shows up in Court and in Congress. Outrage over one shooting isn't going to last. The Organization will.

As many years as some of us have been screaming about gun control, this is just the beginning....

FROM THINK PROGRESS

First National Bank dumps NRA, will no longer issue NRA Visa card

The bank says "customer feedback" caused the change

https://thinkprogress.org/first-national-bank-ends-nra-visa-card-5809195f1672/

BLACK GIRLS AND SELF-IMAGE

Feeling Rebloggy

From Curly Nikki 2010 

It all starts early on in our lives, when the seeds of self-hate are planted by cultural traditions and unenlightenment.

Black culture is cluttered with messages of self-denial, and American culture cashes in on our insecurities.As little girls, our budding notions of self-image are often soiled by old belief systems that say we aren’t loveable in our natural state. 

We are so commonly labeled as too light, too dark, too nappy, too curvy; that we soon begin to value ourselves and each other based on this critical posture. 

We chase after a standard of status, beauty and success, whether we fit into that standard or not. As we grow into women, instead of looking in the mirror and celebrating our unique beauty, we see all of the labels and criticism that we’ve absorbed over the years. We overcompensate and hide our perceived flaws until one day we don’t even know the woman looking back at us. Many of us struggle silently through this identity crisis, while our relationships suffer and the cycle of unawareness continues.

http://www.curlynikki.com/2013/08/why-black-girls-dont-cry.html

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BIGOTRY AND PREFERENCE FOR DUMMIES

Preference: I like men with curly hair.

Bigotry: You should only date men with curly hair like ours (unstated: because the straight hair people are just FOUL)

Bigotry: Everybody should prefer to date men with curly hair (unstated: because the straight hair people are just FOUL)

Bigotry: I think everybody should just date their own same type hairs or there will be trouble. (unstated: the group of hairs I'm -- which happens to be curly-- is the only good group and everybody knows the straight hair people are just FOUL)

MARA BROCK-AKIL AND SALIM AKIL COMING TO OPRAH'S OWN WITH "LOVE IS ___"

MARA BROCK-AKIL SHOWS

GIRLFRIENDS
BEING MARY JANE
BLACK LIGHTENING 

COMING SOON

 "LOVE IS ____"

feeling rebloggy

Love Is ___ originated as Documenting Love, a multi-camera comedy project the Akils developed last season. It landed at ABC with a pilot production commitment. The script, which did not go to production at the broadcast network, is now being reworked as a one-hour single-camera dramedy.

“I’ve dreamed of working with the Akils,” said Oprah Winfrey. “I’ve been a huge fan of their work since first viewing ‘Girlfriends.’ They know just how to hit the cultural nerve to make you think and laugh at the same time.”

Love Is ___  joins OWN’s lineup of scripted dramas that includes Queen Sugar, Greenleaf, The Haves and the Have Nots and If Loving You is Wrong, which year-to-date comprise four of the top six original scripted series on ad-supported cable for women 25-54.

Read More: 
http://deadline.com/2017/07/own-relationship-dramedy-series-mara-brock-akil-salim-akil-1202130795/

Wakanda Immigration Officials Institute Lifetime Ban Against R. Kelly

feeling rebloggy

From the Grio

"Kelly figured he’d get in on the Black Panther fever and tweeted that he was on his way to Wakanda. Twitter users, however, were quick to tell the platinum-selling accused pedophile and kidnapper  that he was not welcome in the Black utopia..."

 Black Twitter went in on him

Read MORE, See More, Laugh More: 

https://thegrio.com/2018/02/22/wakanda-immigration-officials-institute-lifetime-ban-r-kelly/ 

File this under 

TRAGICALLY HILARIOUS

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Tahirah Lamont Brown Becomes The First Black American Female Pilot At Fedex

Feeling Rebloggy

The company announced the promotion of Airbus Captain and Line Check Airman Tahirah Lamont Brown to pilot [in early February 2018], making her the first Black woman to hold this position... 

While at Operation Skyhook in Tuskegee, Alabama, Brown met Bill Norwood, who was the first Black pilot at United Airlines. Norwood took Brown under his wing and introduced her to the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals (OBAP) where she received a lot of career guidance...

~BECAUSE OF THEM WE CAN 

Read More: 

https://www.becauseofthemwecan.com/blogs/stories/https-www-becauseofthemwecan-com-blogs-stories-fedex-hires-its-first-black-female-pilot

AFRO-FUTURISM AND BLACK POWER SET LOOSE IN HOLLYWOOD BY A BLACK PANTHER

In case you have been living under a rock and haven't been following the news on Black Panther's record breaking ticket sales:

"The bold superhero film (242 million) passed up Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($241.6 million) to earn more in its first four days than any movie in history at the North American box office, save for Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($288.1 million), not adjusted for inflation. 

Black Panther also scored the biggest Monday in history with $40.2 million, besting Force Awakens' $40.1 million..."

Read More:  https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/box-office-black-panther-climbs-historic-242m-bow-record-monday-1086456 

WHAT IS AFRO-FUTURISM?  

"Marvel's latest superhero flick is the perfect example of the genre and movement known as Afrofuturism. It combines elements of sci-fi, fantasy and African history and culture to create a new world to explore and escape into.

The term Afrofuturism was coined in the early 1990s to refer to an analysis of African-American sci-fi. But it's since become a method for speculative thought, imagining "what if" scenarios in fiction, music and even architecture that reclaim and reinvigorate depictions of the black experience. 

By re-examining historical events through an African lens, we can more deeply understand where we are today and, in sci-fi creations like the high-tech culture of Wakanda, imagine possibilities beyond the status quo..."

~CNET.COM 

https://www.cnet.com/news/black-panther-afrofuturism-reclaim-black-experience/?ftag=CAD-03-10aaj8j

YEAH YEAH YEAH....

Now that BLACK PANTHER has broken too many ticket sale records to count, the white gatekeepers in Hollywood officially know that Afro-futurism and black sci-fi  fiction can make them big bucks in the movie theaters.

After a few sequels of BLACK PANTHER -- especially now that PANTHER is the latest movie to prove audiences in other countries want to see American made movies about black people too -- we will no longer need the white gatekeepers. We will be able to produce our own content.

Money has already started flowing into black hands. I'm not sure what kind of deal Coogler made based on BLACK PANTHER'S success. And the actors salaries may be fixed too for now. But BLACK PANTHER was the first movie ever filmed at OPRAH protoge TYLER PERRY'S new studios in Georgia.  Tyler Perry should have made big money off this deal. If he didn't, kept his price on the low side in order to help get this first big black project off the ground, he's on the map now. He's still a major player for good. And the money and power will come.

Before the day arrives when black people can make their own big budget films, I'm thinking BLACK PANTHER has made so many white Hollywood executives so much green money that I'm probably gonna see more sci-fi and Afro-futurism on the big screen.

Somebody might even become interested in putting Octavia Butler book on screen, a series of books might become a series of movies. 

I might even get to see the book KINDRED in movie format on the big screen.

Omigawwwd!

Black Nerd Woman Meltdown Imminent!!!

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

REMEMBERING BARBARA JORDAN ON HER BIRTHDAY

• Member of the first debate team from an African-American university to compete in the forensic tournament held annually at Baylor University.
• Served as administrative assistant to the County Judge of Harris County, becoming the first African-American woman to hold that position.
• First African-American state senator in Texas since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. (1966)
• Author of the first successful minimum wage bill in the state of Texas.
• Served as “Governor for a Day” while president pro-tempore of the Texas Senate in 1972, becoming the first African-American woman to serve as chief executive of any state in the union.
• Along with Andrew Young of Georgia, first African-American Southerner to be elected to the U.S. Congress since Reconstruction. (1972)
• First African-American woman from the South to be elected to the U.S. Congress.
• First African-American Texan elected to Congress.
• First woman and the first African-American to deliver the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention.(1976)
• First African-American buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.
• First female to be honored with a statue on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin,

http://diversity.utexas.edu/barbarajordanstatue/history-of-barbara-jordan/

JORDAN ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL BASIS FOR 

NIXON'S IMPEACHMENT  (1974)

ZORA NEALE HURSTON AND THE MIS-EDUCATION OF THE NEGRESS

Never forget that a fair percentage of white people will defend the people that beat us and kill us for not being white

Never forget that a fair percentage of men, including black men, will defend the people that beat us and kill us for not being men.

"The law said he wasn't guilty, so he's not guilty"

I fully expect white people to say things like this when black people they don't really see as people, don't really see as having full humanity, are beaten and killed by police officers for things like not obeying massa fast enough or a car back firing some distance away.

But it takes unmitigated gaul and self-hatred for some black people, --black men and penis pandering pick-me-s that will follow them absolutely anywhere-- to use the same words that white racists use on us to defend men like Bill Cosby, Nate Parker, Chris Brown, Ray Rice.

Make no mistake, the sexism and misogyny in the black community is likely just as deadly to black women as white supremacy is to black people as a whole.

I've often started and stopped working on a comparison of white cop murder victims and black female domestic violence victims. I keep telling myself I've stopped before I've finished  because of some small problem collecting accurate data here and there.

The real reason I keep stopping is because it'll break my heart to see more black women dead of domestic violence at the hands of black men trying to prove a false masculinity than there are black people dead at hands of white police. 

Too many non-feminist black people think that sexism and misogyny is harmless -- as evidenced by the lack of outcry against things like Dave Chappelle and his joke about a Superhero Rapist that gets his power from raping women.

If this level of misogyny is simply called "tasteless" much like white audiences do/did when a white comic goes "racist" to get laughs, then what does this say about the status of black women in the black community?

To me, it says black women aren't seen anywhere near equal to black men and that black men need to be watched as hard as we watch white people when it comes to the images they create of us. 

To me this says, it is not surprising that a lot of black history written by black men erases black women's contributions and erases the flaws and questionable behavior of black male heroes, like Frederick Douglass -- who appears to have moved a white woman into his black wife's house after that same black wife saved him from slavery.

Over the last decade, Shonda Rhimes' shattering glass ceilings in Hollywood have allowed Ava DuVernay, Viola Davis, Regina King, and Taraji P Henson to come through and produce and be leading ladies. Television shows like HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER and QUEEN SUGAR have made me realize how very, very little black men in Hollywood have done for black women --especially if they aren't light-skinned women.

If non-feminist black men in Hollywood can very publicly refuse to stand for all black women instead of just the light-skinned ones they can sexually objectify, then what does that say about the rest of the black community?

I know what it says to me. It says to me that black women need to say to black men "ouch" and "stop" and "come correct or get away from me" a lot more often.

It says to me that black women need black history books written by black feminists and a specific book, that's yet to be written, called MIS-EDUCATION OF THE NEGRESS that addresses white supremacy in the country at large and male supremacy in the black community at the same time. 

And we need to encourage black boys to read these black women's history books so that they'll look up women and also restrict their admiration to men like Kofi Siriboe ....instead of admiring and defending black men of questionable character simply because they got past the white gatekeepers and got rich in this industry or that one.

We, as the black community, have to do better. 

    

FINALLY, AN APPROPRIATE RESPONSE TO MLK ABUSERS

MARLEY DIAS SICK OF READING ABOUT WHITE BOYS AND DOGS

So she decided to do something about it  when she was just 11 years old.

A repost
She started a book drive to collect 1000 black girl books, that is books where the black girl is the main character instead of somebody in the background. And now there's going to be a book about the girl herself because she was an established activist by the age of 12.

She has collected 10,000 black girl books to date. She was a speaker alongside Michelle Obama and Oprah at the United State Women Summit in 2016. That's how she wound up on Forbe's List of 30 Under 30 which lists the 30 movers and shakers of this world that are under 30 years old.

Here's a link to her searchable book list. You can even find books for grown black folk here too.

http://grassrootscommunityfoundation.org/1000-black-girl-books-resource-guide/ 

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

KILLMONGER AS THE MOST RIGHTEOUS VILLAIN THAT NEVER LIVED

MAJOR SPOILERS

I literally teared up when Killmonger was dying. In my head I was screaming, "WAIT! WAIT! Take him to therapy! Shuri can save him! WAIT! What about therapy?" 

Then, I was like um....naw. He could never walk around free again because the macho approach to destroying white supremacy would never completely die inside him. And he'd wind up killing everybody in Wakanda.

Speaking of toxic masculinity and the macho in a soul being somewhat immortal, I've only seen two black male reviewers imply they disliked BLACK PANTHER on this basis. 

One parsed the characters into Black Americans and Black Africans then decided that Black American man's being cast as a bad guy as compared to a White American CIA agent being good made the film "racist." This same reviewer mentioned but had no real objection to the only Black American woman in the film only having 15 words to say before the Black American male character, Killmonger, shot her in the face (head or neck. It's hard to tell in Marvel movies where death is bloodless).

Reading this review, I also wondered if this man failed to notice that almost all the characters were black in this black movie. That is, the bad guys are going have to be black too. And the bad guys are super-bad in white superhero movies, so I didn't expect Killmonger to be any different. 

Therefore, I did not see accumulation of white supremacist stereotypes packed into the Killmonger character or the Wakandans for that matter. 

Most black reviewers seem to see that, despite Killmonger being right about a good number of things, Killmonger was truly a villain. Killmonger's other goal, made so obvious by his actions, was what made him "the evil doer" in the film.

1. Yes, he wanted the end of the worldwide  oppression of black people.
2. But he also wanted most was to take the white man's place at the top of the oppression pile

Some people don't recognize Killmonger as a villain because they are arguing about wanting to use the white man's tools --oppression, war, and genocide-- to dismantle the master's white supremacist house every day.  

In my opinion, Killmonger's making a familiar argument is one of the things that made Killmonger the best villain I've ever seen. And he's one of the best villains in the Marvel Universe thus far because he's had a good reason to be a villain. In most superhero flicks the bad guy's badness either isn't explored very much or the bad guy is bad because he has had an extremely self-centered reaction to loss.

Killmonger's reaction to loss is extremely self-centered too, but some of it is a more of a we-centered selfishness rather than an I-centered selfishness --the "we" being all black people.


Eventually we find out that Erik Killmonger's father killed by his T'Challa's father because Killmonger's father was about to murder another man. Fatherless and also abandoned by the Wakandans, Erik grows up untrained in the ways of healthy manhood. Using a boy's view of what masculinity is, he understands the world simplistically as a dog eat dog place where the biggest, baddest dog wins. 

So Killmonger's  response to his father's murder makes perfect sense. 

He builds himself up to be as physically powerful and invincible as he can. He makes himself appear even more intimidating by cutting himself, leaving raised keloids as a reminder of each person he's killed in battle -- hence his nickname "Killmonger."

Once Killmonger is an adult and a well-trained war-machine of a man,  the anti-racism and social justice Killmonger has learned from his hot-head, gun pulling father is in effect trapped within the toxic masculinity he's learned from the world. 

This it how comes to be that  Killmonger's **what to do** (free black people from oppression) was right while his **his how to do** (mass murder/war) and **why to do (pure revenge)** was wrong. He wanted to do to white people what they have done to us. But everybody who has seen THE LORD OF THE RINGS knows, you can't use Sauron's ring to kill Sauron. It will just eat your soul first then make you turns on your friends.

One cannot use war and oppression and genocide a tool to do good. It's impossible. And the outcome of letting a violent boy-man lead would have been hell on all black people, black women most of all.

However, this villain's arrival in Wakanda with a legitimate desire to free oppressed black people winds up saving T'Challa and all Wakandans from being just like the predominantly white run United States. 

Before Killmonger arrives, the black people of Wakanda are sitting on all this wealth and power, yet doing nothing for the oppressed and suffering people outside its borders. Wakanda wasn't even sharing its medical technology -- in the same way the United States, through it's corporations, will let poor people die because they are unable to afford certain medications. 

Some black people who have seen this movie were upset with how Killmonger was portrayed and how the Wakandans were portrayed, as if black pathology was being used to tell this story. But all Director Ryan Coogler has done is show that black people are human too every bit as morally flawed as white people are as a group. 

That is, of course rich, advanced black people would hoard their resources and keep filthy immigrants out too. Of course we would.

Furthermore, when black people wind up riding the top of the wave in 50 years or 500 years, black people will distribute by class and wealth in the same ways white people do now. And we will have the exact same problems with hoarding wealth and despising poor people -- the only difference will be in the skin color of the people at the top.

Trust me.   Some 8% of black people voted for Donald Trump in today's conditions when white supremacy obviously rules. So imagine how many more black people would vote for a black version of Donald Trump when 90% of black people are middle class or better and 1% of them are super rich.

The good thing about Killmonger was that he was right about Wakanda needing to be socially responsible toward the black people of the world, which is why the audience loved him at points. But Killmongers ashy hotep designs on replacing the white man as top dog would have been as deadly to the world as white supremacy. And in a Killmonger run universe black women would likely have been the first victims.  

We know this by looking at real life.

All you have to do is look at the White Hollywood end of the #MeToo movement to see and understand this. You could also look at what kind of sentence white college boys get for raping white girls. The power white women have is borrowed through marriage or sex...and even that's shaky. 

This is why white feminism exists. 

Oppressors who gain power via oppression 

only pretend to share power

Black women had to argue to get black men of The Civil Rights Movement to allow a black woman to speak for one minute during the entire main program at THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON. And just like white men, black men beat their women when frustrated over not being to find a job and finding himself unable to fulfill his role as breadwinner and leader(boss) of the family.

This is why black feminism exists.   

But, as Joan Morgan said, white women don't call their men "brothers." Having to fight black men for gender equality and stop them from erasing us and using colorism to sort us feels like betrayal  

Whenever white men, black men or brown men are talking about fixing a social problem, all women should keep their eyes open to make sure they are not solely talking about changes that benefit themselves. 

So remember this when at the movies and in real life...

Just say "no" 

to trading one oppressor 

for another

Killmonger's going to jail for life was the only way he could be allowed to live and have the black community be safe, especially the black female half. And I'm glad most of the black men who have seen the movie seem to understand that Killmonger had to go.

As Killmonger's death scene unfolded, I had just enough time to reject my initial therapy idea and accept that it was time for Killmonger to check out if he didn't want to go to prison for life.

Though he shot his black girlfriend in the face or head and lifted an old black woman off the ground by her throat, I'd temporarily forgotten that by the end of the movie. That's the only reason why it was very satisfying, in that moment, to see him get a hero's death. The part of him that wanted to save black people from oppression worldwide was righteous.

However, I did not have enough time to see if T'Challa had been exposed to Killmonger enough to understand just how badly Wakanda's United-States-Like hoarding and isolationism had let black people down in the rest of the world.

I guess that's what sequels are for. 

At the end of BLACK PANTHER, T'Challa is building and creating in a black neighborhood in Oakland. And if you stayed for the credits, you got to see that King T'Challa following up by going to the United Nations to say Wakanda will share technology with the world.

That last bit at the United Nations might have been a step too far.  Seriously. I had a longish Killmonger-moment when T'Challa started promising anything but medical technology to "the colonizers." But I guess that could make for excellent battle scenes in future movies because I am not above wanting to see the movie I expected BLACK PANTHER to be.

I walked into my movie theater expecting all the black characters were going to be good with a couple of white side kicks and that all the bad guys aliens or something. In other words, I expected something that was a skin-color opposite of THE AVENGERS, almost a film negative of all the very white superhero movies that came before.

But what I got was better.

Ryan Coogler's constructed an affluent world where almost all of the character's are black and the "colonizers" are acknowledged as negative and influential but never on screen enough to be central. 

The black women in the movie were there for the entire movie instead of as tokens, a backdrop against which a black male T'Challa could shine--which is what I also expected. 

Nakia and Okoye's part of the car chase scene had me grinning like a kid. And that scene where Okoye is doing battle, throws her wig in the enemy's face, then jumps over the rail to the first floor, red dress flowing was fire!  

Best of all little black girls in the audiene got to see black female characters with strong contrary opinions respected and ultimately trusted by black men. They got to see black women making choices that didn't make it seem like getting married was a woman's most important goal --even though the love story that's critical to every movie I've ever adored was present and accounted for. 

And when love was center stage in the movie the camera was focused on a black man. T'Challa exploded with renewed energy,  throwing multiple enemies off so he could save his sister Shuri from Killmonger -- instead of his very capable love interest.

The Dora Milaje (Based on real warriors)

Even without the Dora Milaje being on screen so much, this movie probably has the most natural looking feminism I've ever seen in a movie. And it's weaved through the entire film -- and it's a Black American film.

Ryan Coogler's a black feminist right? He must be right?

BLACK PANTHER isn't perfect. I had questions about T'Challa's father that I probably shouldn't have had. But by making the good Wakandans of Africa as hoarding and xenophobic as the predominantly white United States, Ryan Coogler has given us a deeply black, deeply human, and political movie that's going to continue to break box office records everywhere.

...which hopefully paves the way for future big budget, black, sci-fi and action adventure films for black nerds like me.

And all the success coming to BLACK PANTHER would not have been possible, if Ryan Coogler hadn't given us a familiar, toxic masculinity suffering villain worth crying over. 

Bravo! Mr. Coogler Bravo!

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For a reasonable black male perspective on Killmonger, click here:

https://shadowandact.com/erik-killmonger-forgotten-wakanda/?

BLACK PANTHER'S OTHER MESSAGE IS CLEAR: TRUST BLACK WOMEN

Feeling Rebloggy
SESALI BOWEN at REFINERY29 WROTE 

I seriously haven’t seen this many people dress up for a movie since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2was released. What’s clear is that Black people have been anxious to see ourselves in Hollywood on such a major stage, and the proof is in the painted faces and berets. That Black Panther is such an excellent example of Black representation is only overshadowed by how it takes a fresh dive into themes that speak directly to the Black experience...

[W]hile T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the Black Panther, is obviously the protagonist of the film, moviegoers looking forward to a narrative that centers Black men and masculinity as the only eligible leaders of Black communities are also in for a rude awakening. 

Instead, it is a visual lesson in how Black men can and should lean into the power and aptitude of their female peers. In scene after scene of Black Panther, the message is clear: trust Black women.

Read More: 
https://www.refinery29.com/2018/02/191093/black-panther-ending-women-wakanda-feminist-message?



I've read some reviews written by a couple of black men who absolutely did not take that "rude awakening" well AT ALL.  More tomorrow. LOL

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