I’m going to start off talking about the Black Panther movie tonight.

I haven’t seen it.

But I am seeing the massive positive effect it is having on America and possibly the whole world, and I am loving it with all my heart, soul, gonads, and mind.

Gonads is a funny word.

Anyhow, here is my completely unqualified opinin as to the secret of its power and therefore its power : it has had such a massive effect on people because it presents a vision of black people completely empowered.

There is no hesitance, defensiveness, apology, deference, or shame in the people of Wakanda. They were never conquered. They were never enslaved. They were never subject to the racist laws of the racist government of a racist people. They never were relegated to a part of a city that was then abandoned by the government that wanted that money to go to, ya know, real people. They never grew up in a place where only drug dealers have money and everyone knows someone who was executed by the police and the options in life are be a criminal or be on welfare.

So they are completely confident in their worth. For them, equality isn’t even a question. The whole issue of racism would seem utterly absurd to them. They have never known it and therefore they are completely self-assured and fearless.

But more than that, they possess every single measure of worth known to humanity, and in abundance. They are not just rich but the richest people on Earfth by a landslide. They are the most technologically advanced nation in the world. They are highly educated and sophisticated. They have a society so humane and socially advanced that they make everyone else look like pigs fighting over trough.

There is absolutely no grounds to object to them that are not racist, is what I am saying. They rock on all levels.

So no wonder black people all over the world don’t just love the movie – it is their new mission in life. It shows people who look just like them who are strong, indepedent, confident, powerful, and utterly without the slightest bit of shame about who they are.

And to be honest, that’s why it makes white audiences too. By portraying black people in such a powerful way, it chases the evil shadows of racism out of our minds. We no longer feel like we have to fear for black people or apologize either to or for them because the movie erases every single black stereotype we have ever absorbed through the culture and replaces it with something pure and good and right.

Not that I think the movie is going to end racism, of course. But it sure as hell works hard to destroy it.

And, as a beautifully bitter bonus. it’s causing a lot of people’s racism to come to the surface as they express their objections to the movie, all of which are racist, and which boil down to things like “These black people are very scary to me!” or “what is depicted here is racially impossible” or “How am I supposed to feel racially superior now?”.

Or how about this one : “I object, in the strongest possible language,  to this film’s blatant attempt to make me see black people as individuals when I am far more comfortable thinking of them as all conforming to the most ego-pleasing racial stereotypes I have hand-picked for myself!

P.S. I am not a racist. ”

To me, this is not merely one of the best schadenfrude buffets in recorded history, as magnificently glorious as that is (mmmm, salt).

It’s an extremely healthy purging of the body politic of the infection of racism by forcing it to come out of the dark and face the clear clean light of day.

Yes, it’s extremely ugly. And if you are an idealistic bent, I am sure you are saddened to discover how much racism there still is in the world.

But remember this : what you may be tempted to see as racism rising is actually the marvelous spectacle of racism dying.  Every time racism is forced to show its ugly, ugly face in public, people’s reponses utterly destroy their delusion that somehow, people support what they do, and make it super fucking clear that they are wrong, wrong, wrong. according to whatever percentage of white people they think of as “really white”.

And all the wailing and lamenting and gnashing of the teeth and butthurt snowflake whining will only strengthen the perception that they are the weak and diseased part of society and it is we, the righteous, who are strong.

Therefore, even if your reptile brain is the only part of your brain that works, it is very very clear which side is the top lizard and which one is historical desbris.

Equalty people strong! Racist people weakl! Me back strong people!

This is how societies change and how social progress happens. Force the ugliness to the surface and it dies like Dracula in a tanning booth. The kids of the day, the ones who actually believe all the idealism we fed them and do not yet have any reason to compromise,  will attack the bad olf beliefs like goddamn white blood cells, and with the moral authority of innocence, burn the old beliefs out of the body politic.

That’s how attitudes change. There is a reason these idiots claim not to be racist, no matter how blatantly racist they are, and that’s because society has made it clear to even the most morally retarded of them knows that to be a racist is to be a very bad person, one that belongs in the same category as criminals, terrorists, and lunatics.

So they cannot accept that label for themselves, no matter how apt it is.

And that was not always the case. Go back to the Sixties and racism was considered to be a legitimate political position, like being pro-choice or anti-gun.

Go back further and it was accepted on the cosmological level. Something as obviously true as water being wet and things falling when you drop them.

What changed it? The tireless efforts of people willing to face the wrath of Hell itself in order to change people’s minds.

And god damn it,. it worked!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.