If you could talk about Wakanda being a country,
what an African country looks like that’s not colonized.
And it’s fascinating because that is possible.
And certainly, before colonization, some of
the greatest and most powerful and wealthiest
and most technologically and intellectually
advanced empires in the world were in Africa,
from Ghana, Mali and Songhai.
I remember over the weekend when I think it
was Forbes magazine stated that Jeff Bezos
was the richest men that ever lived, and a
lot of people corrected him and said, “No,
actually, Mansa Musa, who was the king of
Mali, was reportedly even wealthier than Jeff Bezos.”
But indeed, Mansa Musa gave away a lot of
his wealth.
He actually traveled on this massive pilgrimage
to Egypt and he gave away so much gold in Egypt
he literally destroyed the economy.
But people don’t know these stories.
We’re not taught about precolonial West
Africa.
We’re not even taught about Africa today!
I remember going to Africa for the first time and 
people asking me the weirdest questions about Africa.
And it just goes to show me how little we
are taught about Africa
and how much we are taught about Europe.
And either we are a multicultural nation with
people who come from Africa and Latin America
and Asia and Europe and we are going to really
teach our children and teach our adults about
all these different places, just as we are
teaching them about Native American history
and culture, or we’re are going to focus
on Europe.
And I don’t think we should focus on Europe
because that is a demonstration to me of racism.
I don’t even know if I can even—as you
know, Amy, I don’t even know if it can even
be described in words what "Black Panther"
meant, what T’Challa meant, what many of
those incredible characters meant, what Wakanda
meant, what Wakanda still means to Black people.
And particularly those of us who are really
striving to be antiracist, those of us who
are knowledgeable about precolonial West African
empires, those of us who know that the reason
why there is so much poverty, for instance,
in Africa is not because there’s something
wrong with African people.
That if not for colonialism, if not for the
slave trade, there may be a Wakanda.
And I think that Black people I think in the
United States and all over the world,
for them to see themselves in greatness and in
excellence, for them to see themselves affirmed,
I think was just incredible.
