Wakanda is a social construct: National Geographic 'apologizes' for honest depictions of non-white civilizations

Shot. [OPINION: Wakanda Forever, Jackson Free Press, February 28, 2018]:

While Wakanda is a fictional land, it portrays images of success and wealth that could have been if Africa had not been colonized. It is so vastly opposing to the images we're fed of what Africa looks like. It pushes us to the edge of our imagination and makes fantasy dance with reality in a beautiful way. The intentional effort to study African tribes and tradition gives a magnetic overview of all that is African. 

"Black Panther" is a depiction of the Africa that our ancestors knew could exist. Its portrayal of royalty and tradition is what we come from. It's in our DNA. It's a bright, new morning light that awakens pride that Hollywood has controlled for generations. Up to this point, we've been served a fraction of what most of society envisions when they think about black people—you know: angry, ratchet, pimps, whores, just folk whose value is lost on them. I suppose Hollywood under-estimated our desire to see us complete an entire cast, in starring roles, in positions of power, in beauty and intelligence. 

Wakanda is a fictional place and exists only in the minds of the comic-book writers, but it represents something very real: a break in mental slavery that has kept us bound for so long that we couldn't see a world that belonged to us. It represents an idea that offers real hope, opportunity and determination. Wakanda is everywhere. But the place that is most important, where its reign is undeniable, is in our hearts. Once we open them to this fictional place, it is now reality—a reality that we all embrace in unity. 

Listening to the stories my father shared with me as a young girl gave me a true connection to my African ancestry. I didn't know that seeing a movie would serve as such a determined reality. There's nothing fictional about the potential, the history, the traditions, the intelligence, the ancient tribal cultures and excellence Wakanda introduced to some and reintroduced to others. It's in us—always has been; always will be. 

Wakanda Forever! Africa Forever!

Double Shot. [Hotel booking sites report that searches for the FICTIONAL country of Wakanda from the Black Panther movie are up 620%, Daily Mail, 3-13-18]:

It seems that the Black Panther movie has done such a good job of immersing audiences in its world that many people think it's real. 

Two hotel booking sites have revealed that site searches for the word 'Wakanda' – the name of the fictional African country the movie is set in – have risen dramatically. 

Hotelscan.com reported that the number of people landing on its Wisconsin Wakanda Water Park page is up by 620 per cent and Hotels.com reported that searches for neighbouring Wakanda Park are up by 55 per cent year on year. 

A spokesperson for hotelscan.com commented: 'The fact we've seen such an increase in the number of site visits to the Wakanda Water Park destination page on our website since the launch of Black Panther suggests that, until people visit our website searching for trips, they're not aware it's a fictional destination. 

'Either that, or people are more interested than ever in attending the Water Park, but we think that the movie has something to do with it!' 

Hotels.com, meanwhile, said it had spotted spikes in searches to other Wakanda namesakes around the world. 

It said searches for Wauconda, Illinois (pronounced identically to Wakanda), are up more than 25 per cent and Makanda, also in Illinois, are up over 40 per cent year on year.

And finally, the chaser. [For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It, National Geographic, March 2018]:

Race is not a biological construct, as writer Elizabeth Kolbert explains in this issue, but a social one that can have devastating effects. “So many of the horrors of the past few centuries can be traced to the idea that one race is inferior to another,” she writes. “Racial distinctions continue to shape our politics, our neighborhoods, and our sense of self.” 

How we present race matters. I hear from readers that National Geographic provided their first look at the world. Our explorers, scientists, photographers, and writers have taken people to places they’d never even imagined; it’s a tradition that still drives our coverage and of which we’re rightly proud. And it means we have a duty, in every story, to present accurate and authentic depictions—a duty heightened when we cover fraught issues such as race. 

We asked John Edwin Mason to help with this examination. Mason is well positioned for the task: He’s a University of Virginia professor specializing in the history of photography and the history of Africa, a frequent crossroads of our storytelling. He dived into our archives. 

What Mason found in short was that until the 1970s National Geographicall but ignored people of color who lived in the United States, rarely acknowledging them beyond laborers or domestic workers. Meanwhile it pictured “natives” elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages—every type of cliché. 

Americans got ideas about the world from Tarzan movies and crude racist caricatures,” he said. “Segregation was the way it was. National Geographic wasn’t teaching as much as reinforcing messages they already received and doing so in a magazine that had tremendous authority. National Geographic comes into existence at the height of colonialism, and the world was divided into the colonizers and the colonized. That was a color line, and National Geographic was reflecting that view of the world.” 

Some of what you find in our archives leaves you speechless, like a 1916 story about Australia. Underneath photos of two Aboriginal people, the caption reads: “South Australian Blackfellows: These savages rank lowest in intelligence of all human beings.” 

Mason also uncovered a string of oddities—photos of “the native person fascinated by Western technology. It really creates this us-and-them dichotomy between the civilized and the uncivilized.” And then there’s the excess of pictures of beautiful Pacific-island women. 

“If I were talking to my students about the period until after the 1960s, I would say, ‘Be cautious about what you think you are learning here,’ ” he said. “At the same time, you acknowledge the strengths National Geographic had even in this period, to take people out into the world to see things we’ve never seen before. It’s possible to say that a magazine can open people’s eyes at the same time it closes them.”

#WakandaIsntReal. The non-white world National Geographic photographers captured for decades is real.  Their photographs provide a reminder race is a biological construct, equality (and Wakanda) represent the social constructs.