NEW YORK | In the weeks since its release, “Black Panther” has been a film juggernaut, bringing in more than $1 billion globally.
It’s also put a spotlight on a very real-world issue — the questions of connection or displacement among peoples of African descent all over the world.
Academics and activists including W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X have been talking about that for a century and more, and it’s an issue that’s impacted how Africans and African-Americans have interacted with each other.
The movie’s central story pits T’Challa, the Black Panther and king of Wakanda, against Erik Killmonger, the son of T’Challa’s uncle and an American woman, who was abandoned in America, and touches on how and whether Wakanda’s power should be used in aid of black people globally.