Rod and Karen discuss listener feedback.
Twitter: @rodimusprime @SayDatAgain @TBGWT
Email: theblackguywhotips@gmail.com
Blog: www.theblackguywhotips.com
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I’ve seen Black Panther twice already and I participated in teh #WakandaCametoSlay. It was so awesome going to the movie theater and seeing families, couples, and groups of friends in their Wakanda Church Best. It was beautiful to go online and see the premieres in other countries where the black people there also dressed up. Seriously, I’ve never felt so connected to black people and African people outside of the United States before. Imagine that!
I probably shouldn’t feel so powerfully connected to a pretend African nation. When I was college in 1990, I told my grandma that I didn’t feel connected to a heritage or a culture. I didn’t have the words to convey my feelings back then because I was just 18 an discovering my blackness. My friends had southern roots, Caribbean roots, Latin roots, Italian roots…A culture they could point to, touch, teach, pass down… I didn’t. I was a Brooklynite with a generational past that was hidden, not discussed, or lost. (Literally, my grandma told very little of her background or even her mother’s first name.) The collective pride of my Black friends, black Twitter, black social media, et al for Black Panther has been amazing. We’ve endured a lifetime of slurs and angry rhetoric of “go back to Africa” although we don’t know where in Africa to go or if we’d want to go because we’ve subconsciously swallowed the hate and rhetoric and misconception that Africa is a sh*thole. But then we get this fantastical place in Africa called WAKANDA with strong men and women. Warriors, artists, tech wizards and heroes who can save the world. Beautiful, not self hating, not code switching, and telling white folks to fuck off without fear of death Black AFRICANS. YASSSSS. This is the Africa we want to go back to. This is the Africa we imagine we were stolen from. For two hours, this is the ultimate escapism where we, I, the world has proof that WE ARE ROYALTY.