By Brittany Willis
I’ve been sitting with Black Panther for over a week now, letting it “breathe†before saying too much or expressing my thoughts. During that time, I’ve seen thinkpiece after thinkpiece about the character Erik Killmonger (played by Michael B. Jordan), which is funny because after my initial viewing I didn’t think Killmonger was as polarizing as he’s become to internet pundits.
I also didn’t think Jordan gave an overall great performance (which may have more to do with my indifference towards Jordan’s acting in general). However, there were moments in the film where he was flawless, and in these moments I saw Killmonger in a way that was very personal and triggering. I saw him as a traumatized Black boy.
Killmonger reminded me of the Black boys in my classroom. He reminded me of all the pain and anger that is brought to me every weekday because nobody else acknowledges it.
I wasn’t sure if my sympathy for Erik was misguided or misplaced until I observed how others were responding to him. I found that the reactions to his characterization were very much like our engagement with Black children when they display negative behaviors that we don’t consider respectable or safe.
It then made sense why the character garnered such varied reactions. Most adults don’t actually know how to engage Black children—period, let alone when they are doing something we don’t approve of. If Erik’s story parallels that of Black children, it’s no wonder people’s reactions to him run the gamut from extremely negative and dismissive to extremely positive yet confused.
I don’t want to argue whether Erik Killmonger was wrong or right—especially since it’s already been decided—but I do want to examine his character in the context of childhood trauma and how we respond to it. Hopefully, this makes those arguments more comprehensive and well-rounded. I truly believe our relationship with Black children, as well as the traumatized children within us, has tangible implications on our relationship with Black people as a whole.
“Tell me who’s gonna save me from myself
When this life is all I knowâ€
— The Weeknd & Kendrick Lamar, “Pray For Me†from the Black Panther soundtrack
Erik Stevens, born N’Jadaka and later nicknamed Killmonger, experienced unfathomable trauma at an early age. He found his father dead in their home and clung to his lifeless body long enough for the image to become embedded in his memory. There is no mention of Erik’s mother in the film (her backstory is better explained in the comics), but we can assume she was either absent from his life or her presence wasn’t sufficient enough for him to process his father’s death fully and constructively.
When children experience trauma, it has lifelong psychological and physical health implications. Childhood adversity makes a person more likely to exhibit high-risk behavior. So it’s appropriate that Erik’s trauma becomes a launching pad for his vengeance and violence.
Not to mention, he doesn’t grow up in uncolonized Wakanda. He grows up in the very colonized, very anti-Black United States. We don’t have to guess what type of anti-Black violence—in all its forms—Erik was subjected to growing up. He then participates in that violence as a mercenary (which he admits before he fights T’Challa in ritual combat). All of this sustains his childhood trauma, never giving him a chance to deal with it properly.
I’ve seen so many descriptors of Erik in response to his negative behavior in the film. He’s a hotep, a neo-imperialist, and a purveyor of toxic masculinity. Someone even called him evil and in the same breath labeled him a “damaged child,†which is ironic because that’s the only description I’ve seen that acknowledged Erik’s childhood trauma and yet it still failed to examine it as an antecedent to his actions.
Not many are really considering the source of Erik’s rage before analyzing it, which does an injustice to their analysis.
We do the same thing with Black children. Oftentimes, when we see them display destructive behavior, we don’t stop to consider what caused the destruction within them. This is partly because adults just generally lack insight, but also because we’ve done a good job burying our own childhood traumas and therefore cannot properly empathize.
We don’t want to open old wounds by identifying similar sores in children. Their pain calls to our pain. When we don’t acknowledge it, our reactions to the manifestations of that pain aren’t sincere, at best, and detrimental to the child, at worst.
I wonder how many people consciously chose to overlook Erik’s trauma, and how many subconsciously blocked it, before reacting to the violence he displayed.
“Tell me who’s gonna save me from this hell
Without you, I’m all aloneâ€
The scenes in which Jordan’s performance was most powerful to me all occurred in Wakanda. Specifically, each time Erik spoke to T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and the scene where he visited his father, N’Jobu (Sterling K. Brown), in the ancestral realm. The latter was especially poignant in that it was a more overt example of how significant his childhood trauma was.
He goes to his place of pain and the site of his father’s death to converse with his ancestor—in stark contrast to T’Challa’s ancestral realm, which looks to be peaceful and full of life. In addition, part of the time that Erik is in this realm, he is perceived as a child. I really don’t know how much louder Ryan Coogler can scream at us.
The subtext of that scene, as well as the scenes with T’Challa, lies within Erik’s eyes. Every time he talks to a Wakandan, Erik’s pain and despair are desperate to erupt and he struggles to keep it down. With his father, he struggles to the point of failure, and expresses that pain externally through tears. With T’Challa, however, once that pain reaches Erik’s eyes, and he looks like he’s about to cry, he pushes it down and chooses rage instead. We don’t see Erik go through this emotional process anywhere else in the movie, and there’s a reason for that.
In response to popular analyses of Erik that fail to give him space to work through his trauma, Hari Ziyad asked, “Where do we who are angry go?†The answer is we go to dump that anger onto each other before we are taught not to. This is no more evident than it is with Black children. When they display destructive behavior, where and with whom do they act out? The safest place in this world for their destruction is among Black people. They instinctively know that expressing their anger elsewhere results in their demise. So, they bring their rage to us because nowhere else is a refuge.
What happens when we tell Black children their rage isn’t valid or justified? What happens when we respond to their anger with violence in an attempt to stifle that anger?
We teach children that we are not to be trusted with their full being. They will keep coming back to us because nobody else will have them, but every time they come, a new link is added to the chain we use to try to contain them. The freedom with which Black children express their pain scares us, and we don’t know what to do except mute that expression.
I saw this happen with Erik not only in Black folks’ responses to the character, but also within the subtext of Black Panther’s script. Yes, we see his violence in the earlier scenes of the movie, and we can assume his anger manifested in other ways outside of the plot. It isn’t until he gets to Wakanda, though, that his rage is fully realized. It isn’t until he’s among his people that he feels free enough to carry out his vengeance against the world.
Unfortunately, just like the rest of the world, Wakanda tells Erik that his rage isn’t valid. He’s heard this before, but he has nowhere else to go and he knows it. So, he responds to their rejection with destruction, not because he genuinely wants to see Wakanda burn, I’d argue, but because he’d rather they fought and hated him than forgot him and felt nothing.
Erik’s violence in Wakanda becomes comprehensible when you realize that it’s fueled by his desire not to be abandoned again. Do we really think he burned the heart-shaped herb, ensuring there would be no Black Panther after him, because he’s purely evil and has no respect for Wakanda’s customs, or did he burn it because it was a representation of how replaceable he was even among his own people?
Similarly, when our children take their anger out on us, is it truly because they feel animosity towards us, or is it because they know they’ll at least get a response, however silencing our response may be?
“I fight the world, I fight you, I fight myselfâ€
The most depressing and least Afrofuturistic aspect of this movie and the conversations surrounding it is how it portrays Black people fighting each other in response to whiteness. Erik’s ideology is based on the white violence he’s experienced, and Wakanda’s opposition to him is based on wanting to avoid that same violence.
The presence of Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) in Wakanda is a literal representation of this dynamic. He takes it upon himself to “fill in the blanks†for Shuri (Letitia Wright), Okoye (Danai Gurira) and T’Challa when Erik shows up in Wakanda. Ross immediately explains how dangerous Erik is, saying “he’s not Wakandan, he’s one of us,†effectively associating Erik with the white violence that Wakanda has shielded itself from. It’s possible that had Ross not been there to highlight the worst parts of Erik’s past, the Wakandans would have been a bit more fervent in investigating his identity and motivations.
Our discussions about Erik’s characterization are also couched in the effect of whiteness on our perceptions of Black people. Those who agree with Erik are quick to say he’s a revolutionary and symbol for Black liberation. Those who don’t agree say he’s a symbol of his own ambition.
In the absence of whiteness, who is Erik allowed to be? He can just be. His being isn’t predicated upon whiteness and our struggle to maneuver through its machinations. Would we identify him as a liberator if whiteness hadn’t prevented us from being liberated? Would we accuse him of selfish ambition if our fear of white violence hadn’t stifled our own ambitious nature?
Whiteness is consistently impeding our progress with each other. And we prove this time and time again in our dealings with Black children.
The main reason their freedom of expression scares us is because we fear what whiteness will do to that freedom. Anti-Blackness has convinced us to break our children down before the world gets a chance to, because our violence is less destructive. Instead of shielding our children, however, the bruises we inflict upon them make them a more visible target.
What happens when our engagement with children isn’t founded upon our reaction to whiteness but on our desire for them to be unapologetically themselves?
Teaching Black children has taught me how to love them unconditionally and be better at keeping that love even through their faults. As a result, my love for Black people has grown immensely over the years, and I’ve gotten better at preserving that love for the most problematic among us.
This doesn’t mean I excuse or never call attention to the problematic behavior. Nor does it mean I never take a break when I’m weary of contending with those who display this behavior. All it means is that a consequence to problematic behavior can never be complete abandonment of them and their Blackness.
In an earlier scene of Black Panther, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) stops T’Challa from killing a masked soldier who was a part of the group holding her captive, simply exclaiming, “He’s just a boy!†Black Panther immediately halts his attack because he understands the vulnerability of the child, and how that vulnerability could have been exploited without Nakia explaining it to him.
N’Jadaka deserved that same pause in reaction when he returned to Wakanda. Erik deserves that same pause in our analysis of him. We all deserve that same pause in our interactions with each other, because this anti-Black world ensures none of us grow up without unresolved childhood trauma and the need to heal from it.
Brittany Willis is a proud Baltimore City native. She is a teacher, writer, special education advocate, womanist, and Blerd who loves Black children, Serena Williams, and Beyoncé. Follow more of her stories at medium.com/@heymisswillis
