Black Liberalism and White Ignorance: Thinking Black Panther With Charles Mills

• In Event: Theorizing Structures of Domination, Challenging Modalities of Racial Exclusion

Abstract

Marvel's recent blockbuster Black Panther captures somewhat of a paradox. On the one hand, it imagines a robustly flourishing African nation untouched by colonialism, though surrounded by a world ordered through western liberal democracy and whiteness. On the other, it is a film produced by corporate conglomerate Disney/Marvel with a $200 million budget and a worldwide gross of $1.3 billion (and counting). This paper draws on theories of racial capitalism, racial liberalism, and white ignorance, focusing specifically on the work of Charles Mills, in order to examine both the politics surrounding the film’s reception, as well as the political imagination of the film itself. It asks: how does the film understand systemic racial injustice, and what are its prescriptions? How should we understand who or what the real heroes and villains are? What (if any) form of black liberation does the film portray? And, finally, what (if anything) does the film say about whiteness? We argue that to think the film alongside Mills invites both some conceptual tools for critiquing the film’s imagination (or lack thereof) of black liberation, while at the same time serves to sharpen some of the questions about black liberation that are indeed at stake for the film’s characters and for the audience.

Authors

• Emily Crandall, Graduate Center, CUNY

• Erika L Iverson, Drake University