To a certain extent its just sad that Wakanda and stuff like it became such a massive racially charged cliche.
Like holy hell, this sort of story was a cliche in 1961 when Wakanda was first written:
Black Panther: 'To me he was more than a father, he was like a god!'
Ben: 'Look kiddo, why don't you save yourself the trouble? I know the rest of the story by heart! Everything was hunky-dory until the greedy ivory hunters made the scene!
Wakanda wasn't actually secreted away, hidden utopia through all of history. It was revolutionized by the Black Panther after foreign invaders were driven off by him and he reverse-engineered their technology (Klaw). Also, the black panther was a genius who revolutionized his nation by his very words 'For a lark'. And they made money by TRADING vibranium. Its not the core technology for everything in the friggin world. And then at the end of the story he becomes a superhero in the service of all mankind.
It was an anti-colonialism story to be sure, but it was one with a twist and a whole lot less bitterness that was attributed to it later to fit our more bitter times.
Do you really think that the 1960s had
less bitterness around race in the U.S. than modern times? I find that kind of hard to fathom. It seems to me that the 1960s were a high point of racial violence and division within the U.S.
Regarding Wakanda - it's true that the original Fantastic Four story has a ton of details that were changed in the later comics - but most of those changes were overseen by the original co-creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the 1970s. It's still true even in the 1961 Fantastic Four story that Wakanda was (a) not conquered by whites, (b) highly isolationist and secretive, and (c) a superscience land of wonders. In the Fantastic Four story, the superscience happened within one generation - but that was changed to happening over centuries. Also, in the later revisions, Wakanda was more clearly *not* a utopia - while in the original story there was no sign of internal problems, the Black Panther comic shows more internal divisions and problems.
Personally, I'm a fan of the Black Panther comics, especially the 1990s run by writer Christopher Priest. What I especially disagree with is the idea that even the *concept* of a fictional isolated nation like Wakanda is racist. It is anti-colonialist, as you say, but that doesn't make it racist. Wakandans aren't implied better because of genetic superiority - they have the advantage of superior circumstances from their country's natural resources.
The fantasy is "If it hadn't been for the civilization that invented Democracy and Human Rights, we would have actually been vastly superior to them in every way: intellectually, spiritually, morally and technologically".
If you prefer, you can call it a "resentment fantasy", or just a "hate fantasy".
It’s a fantasy that has as a key component avoidance of ‘pollution’ by other races and cultures. That’s a pretty standard racist trope that would be widely recognized in this instance if it was not coming from Native Americans, but whites instead.
wmarshal - You haven't been explicit about this, but do you also agree that Wakanda is racist, because it is an isolationist country that developed without pollution by other races and cultures? Your claim is that any fictional isolation of cultures is racist, which I disagree with. Sure, racist fiction often includes less intermingling of races and cultures - but that doesn't mean that any isolation of races or cultures is *inherently* racist. I also cites various "Lost World" fiction which has humans developing in isolation. Do you think those are inherently racist as well?
To me, complaining about the isolation seems disingenuous.
Suppose a setting gives fictional advantages to non-whites like vibranium or psychic powers, but does *not* isolate them from Europeans. It seems to me that this is far more likely to read as a revenge or hate narrative, since it means that there will be war between whites and non-whites where the whites are conquered. There could be a narrative of "oh, if we couldn't slaughter the Native Americans, then we'd live in peace with them and nicely give them our cultural advances" - but that is unrealistic to both European culture and Native American culture.