We are in historic times, with a historic film in our presence. Unless you live under a rock then you know that this past week was officially dashiki blow-out sale week and also the debut of Marvel’s Black Panther. Around the globe, black people took to theaters to see the Kingdom of Wakanda come to life on the big screen. In proud Wakandan fashion, there was a celebration in lobbies everywhere and I’m proud to say that I was in the number.

Despite the moving storyline and arguably one of the most compelling villains in the MCU, when I walked out of the theater there was only one question I could not get off of my mind.

Was Wakanda TOO BLACK?

How could an all black country possibly survive in a globalized world? How could the average Wakandan ever learn to live in the “real world” once they left their black bubble? They would never be able to survive out there with white society.

If you have a baffled look on your face right now then you understand exactly how I feel talking to black people who try to discount the black college experience.

It was beautiful watching black people celebrate Wakanda this week. However, realizing that some of these same black supporters think Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) aren’t diverse enough for them to thrive in, is perplexing. Sitting in the theater for both screenings (yes I watched it twice), I had to ask myself, if HBCUs aren’t “diverse” enough for black people…is Wakanda “diverse” enough?

Often when discussing the role of black colleges, there’s a recycled line about artificial diversity and how lacking black people are for deciding to go to a university with majority black people. We hear, usually from black people who have never seen a black college campus, “that’s too many black people” or “they will never learn how to survive outside of their utopia”.

At its core, the notion of the black bubble implies that HBCU grads and Wakandan citizens are blindly unaware of the world around them and cannot survive unless they are prepared by whiteness. This toxic rhetoric not only robs black culture of its own dynamism by making it appear monolithic, but it also perpetuates the idea of black run spaces needing more non-black diversity to be validated.

Yet, many of the same “for the culture” black people who spread this baseless rhetoric, will be in the theater supporting their favorite majority-black kingdom of Wakanda, because…logic.

Have we reached a point where black fictional spaces are great, but actual Wakanda campuses are somehow not enough?

Though several HBCUs are seeing spikes in enrollment as more black people take interest in the unique educational experience, we must address this baseless line of thought that is being spread about our own spaces, by our own culture. Inversely, if I were to stand up in the local theater and say “we need more white people in this film”, the ancestors would strike me where I stood. Why not the same type of protection about real black autonomous spaces?

Can we in good faith, celebrate blackness on the screen and reject over one-hundred actual Wakanda outreach centers (HBCUs) across the country because of our selective view of black diversity? Are we enough or aren’t we?

In all, I don’t look to disrupt the celebration (I will likely watch Black Panther a 3^rd time), but I think this is a great time to question how we as black people correlate our expressed values to our actions.

I will leave you with wise words I am pretty sure, T’Challa would say (and could absolutely say in the next movie, hint if Ryan Coogler is reading this)

Every day we either choose to build or to stifle our own Kingdom.

Wakanda Forever.

Maurice E. Jackson

Writing since August 2016 · 2 stories contributed