Current Issues: Black Panther

<p>For additional notes and resources check out Douglas’ <a href="https://www.douglasjacoby.com/black-panther/"><strong>website</strong></a>.</p><p>In April someone asked me if I'd seen Black Panther. I had heard of it, but admitted I wasn't particularly interested in yet another superhero movie. "I'll probably watch it once it comes out on the airplane," I replied. Yet on learning the film featured a black superhero -- possibly the first ever -- and had touched some emotional chords among many African Americans, I knew I needed to see it. This is an important film -- and one reason I needed to watch it was that I am not an African American. There are some things I simply don't get.</p><p>As it turned out, in May I was able to watch Black Panther on a flight to Japan. (Even on the small screen, the movie was riveting.) I took copious notes. I watched it a second time (without the sound) on a flight from Atlanta to San Antonio. It's truly a superb film. But let me digress for a moment.</p><p><strong>Detour: Black Lightning</strong><br />Poking around the worldwide web, I quickly found another black superhero. He is Black Lightning, a winsome and modest school principal with superpowers. But this DC Comics creation isn't recent; Black Lightning came out way back in 1977 -- the last time it snowed in the Bahamas, and the year I became a Christian. The television series Black Lightning came out in 2018. As one reviewer put it,</p><p>It is a disturbingly familiar scene: a black motorist standing outside his car on a rainy night, arguing with the white police officer who has pulled him over for seemingly no reason. As this moment plays out in the opening minutes of “<a href="http://www.cwtv.com/shows/black-lightning/">Black Lightning</a>,” the CW series based on that <a href="http://www.dccomics.com/graphic-novels/black-lightning-2016/black-lightning">DC superhero</a>, the motorist in question is Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams), who stepped back from his role as a crime-fighting vigilante to focus on his civilian ide