Why diversity is important (and why Black Panther is a great movie because of it)
This post was written by a student. It has not been fact checked or edited.
Black Panther is a movie about a highly technically-advanced country called Wakanda. The main character is an African king named T’challa who stops the villain Klaw from stealing vibranium, and goes on to defeat and kill Killmonger, who tries to usurp his throne. I believe that Black Panther is important because we’ve never had a good modern (superhero) movie with this much representation of African culture and customs shown in a futuristic and advanced fashion. Africans and African culture, for a long time, has been viewed as barbaric and gross, but this movie showed them in a very upstanding fashion. African boys and girls can finally have a modern movie about their people, and better yet, a sequel to said movie. Recently, we have seen more diversity in movies with characters being adapted as black people, with little change to their story and character as a whole, Many (usually racist) people get very angry at this for some reason, saying wild things such as “Being white was part of [___]’s character” and “They keep making everything progressive these days”. In my personal opinion this doesn’t really matter, they are movies, and they give black kids a person to relate to. Now, diversity doesn’t always mean black and white. It can be Spanish, Columbian , Indian, Jewish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Greek, Italian, and many more things. Even the races I've listed here have subcultures with many different customs and traditions themselves. Most people, even now, have little movies and characters they can relate to. I think diversity is important because people of all walks of life should have something big to represent them and their culture as a whole.