My Peeps of Color
I totally understand the hype surrounding Black Panther and its importance to our culture, but can we not use this as an excuse to be obnoxious–even toxic–especially towards white people?
There will undoubtedly be white people who are confused and don’t get our excitement, but you can still explain it in a way that doesn’t insult their intelligence or belittle them. This movie shouldn’t be an excuse to gate others either. Don’t let me catch y’all telling white people they are not allowed to watch this movie. EVERYONE needs to see this movie and I think we can all agree that this movie needs to outsell Fifty Shades Freed.
Fifty Shades Freed will have an extra weekend on this movie so y’all need to go to the movie in droves as well as encouraging our white allies to join us. Also, Please don’t insult the comic readers because they will rip you a new one. You really don’t want it with a comic nerd.
This unfortunately brings me to another sad thing about this movie’s increased popularity. I may sound like a Debbie Downer with this next part, but hear me out because this maybe the realest truth I drop in a while.
The Black Panther comic character has been around since the 60;s. The sad irony about this many people of color getting excited about The Black Panther is y’all would’ve kicked someone’s ass back in the 90’s just for reading the damn comics.
As I’ve mentioned in many of my posts, being nerdy (comics, video games, trading cards, sci fi, fantasy novels and table top games) in my day was severely frowned upon. Being both black and nerdy was grounds for getting ousted by your own. Being nerdy was considered a white thing even though I know plenty of white people who endured bullying. I’ve been bullied more often by my own than I was by non-blacks for enjoying the stuff above. I’ve moved past it, but the irony is pretty sad. A lot of us old school nerds have to deal with this bittersweet feeling of non nerds finally loving the shit out of the stuff we enjoyed back in the day and endured bullying for enjoying.
To My Non Nerds
I’m glad your finally discovering what we’ve loved for years, but never forget our troubled history and the messed up irony of this movie’s wide spread popularity within our community.
To My Nerds of Color
You wear that nerd badge proudly and never forget our origins. It’s an unfortunate trend we have to deal with, but, lets bask in the fact that their enjoyment hopefully one day will make them sit back and realize how dumb it was to make fun of people for enjoying this stuff.
Things Non-Nerds Have Been Eating Up Since The 80-90’s
1. A Song of Ice and Fire (y’all are obsessed with Game of Thrones now).
2. Star Wars (Y’all are eating up these new slew of movies).
3. Pokémon (“Pokémon Go” was pretty dope wasn’t it?)
4. Star Trek (JJ Abrams has y’all hooked)
5. Dragon Ball Z made anime accessible for an entire generation of black youth. The whole hood has DBZ Super on smash.
You’re welcome. There’s a wealth of material to dive into if you’re willing to not care what people think.
Stay classy.
Flemmings Beaubrun is an avid gamer and lover of music. When not working, Flemmings likes to spend his time whipping up dank beats for the masses. He also spends his weekends thrift shopping for rare video games and obscure electronics. Other times he’s in front of a TV with a giant bowl of cereal enjoying shows from the 90s.