Rod Watson: Black Panther having impact far beyond movie screen or comics

Galactic Tribe program director Anthony Pierce, center, guides Asheem Ali, 11, foreground, and Justice Washington, 10, in a stretching exercise during the SPEAR Day of Play at the Delavan Grider Community Center on Saturday. “Any type of artist you can think of, we’ve had them,” said Pierce.

Taamir McCray, 6, Galactic Tribe social media specialist Otis East, and James Wright, 7, stretch during an exercise at the SPEAR Day of Play at the Delavan-Grider Community Center on Saturday.

Craig Lester Jr. gives Justice Washington, 10, advice on throwing punches during the SPEAR Day of Play at the Delavan-Grider Community Center on Saturday.

Urban Affairs Editor/Columnist

In defining the term “blerd,” the online Slang Dictionary wastes no time in citing a love of comic books and their action figures in explaining the origins of the term for a Black nerd.

Yet in light of the historic miseducation and undereducation of Black youths – both before and during the pandemic – anything that gets more of them to read and to use that as a springboard to deeper conversations has to be welcomed.

The Black Panther comic book figure introduced in 1966 – and popularized by the 2018 hit movie – has become one such Buffalo springboard. Young people and their families drawn to biweekly programs put on by the Galactic Tribe delve into the comic book as a starting point to explore the past, examine the present and to plot a successful future. Members of the tribe describe themselves as “Afrofuturists” who didn’t want to miss the chance presented by the movie.

“We didn’t want the wave to die,” said DQ Grant, executive director of the nonprofit organization that formed in the wake of the movie.

Galactic Tribe program director Anthony Pierce asks a question to children participating in the SPEAR Day of Play at the Delavan-Grider Community Center on Saturday.

Meeting the second and fourth Saturdays of each month in the Delavan Grider Community Center, the group’s Wakanda Alliance programs focus on education as well as physical and mental health. It brings in community experts in everything from yoga to meditation and boxing as well as artists from all genres, including hosting virtual sessions with writers of the comic series.

“Any type of artist you can think of, we’ve had them,” said Anthony Pierce, the tribe’s program director.

But the effort extends beyond the arts, in which Blacks have historically been well represented. Shuri’s STEM Lab, named for Black Panther’s sister, gets kids involved in science, technology, engineering and math. The Galactic Tribe, for instance, collaborated with the Foundry, a community-based “makerspace,” to enable a group of teens to build a model house, complete with electrical circuits.

Like comics themselves, the STEM fields may not be associated with Black people in some minds. But one goal of the lab is making Black youths see that these professions are, indeed, for them.

“A lot of our ancestors were among the greatest inventors of all time because they had to solve problems other people didn’t want to deal with,” said John Washington, the tribe’s director of training and operations.

In a world of so much negativity when it comes to youths of color, the overall goal of everything they do, Pierce said, is to get young people to think about how powerful their roots are, how fertile their present is and what they can do in the future.

TownNews.com Content Exchange Chadwick Boseman in the 2018 film “Black Panther.”

And it all starts with a comic book, which, in the right hands, is anything but child’s play.

“One of the things we see with comic books is that it really pushes kids to see things creatively,” as well as through an Afro-centric lens, said Monica Miles, who earned her doctorate in curriculum and instruction and the science of learning from the University at Buffalo and is now an assistant professor of engineering education at UB.

Efforts like Mayor Byron Brown’s annual Summer Reading Challenge also play a positive role. But with comics, and particularly with the popularity of the Black Panther franchise, there’s no arm-twisting necessary.

“They’re so engaged that they say, ‘I can’t wait to read what happens next,’ ” said Miles, who also founded the small business Mother Earth Literacies and has been involved with the Galactic Tribe the past four years.

Beyond mere entertainment, the storylines become vehicles for discussing what’s happening in the kids’ lives, and ways of dealing with emotions or situations, as well as educational tools for discussing writing and how to construct a story.

“It’s not just the comics … They go into the emotions of the characters and how that relates back to what they might be going through and how they can overcome the obstacles in their life,” said Queenia AsheeMáat, who has attended the sessions with her 11-year-old son Asheem Ali the past four years.

“The program has really helped him to read more,” she said as she watched him exercise during the group’s SPEAR Day of Play, an acronym for Superior Potential in Emotional and Athletic Recreation. She described Asheem as a “late reader” who had been hesitant to read out loud but who now, thanks to the program, is confident enough to feel “that it’s OK to read in pubic.”

Galactic Tribe program director Anthony Pierce wrestles Asheem Ali, 11, during the SPEAR Day of Play at the Delavan-Grider Community Center on Saturday Aug. 12, 2023.

While the term Afrofuturist might strike some as a fanciful, it really just describes someone concerned about the future of Black people. Grant applies it to everyone from Harriett Tubman to Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr. and said it depicts someone who knows that “what they do today will have a positive effect for our people tomorrow.”

The comic book can spark that kind of thought process.

“They get so creative in looking at ways to reshape our community,” Miles said of the young people drawn to the program.

That impact on the community extends beyond the Saturday programs or participating in events like Juneteenth or Kwanza. The group’s third annual sneaker drive is coming up Aug. 26 at the King Urban Life Center. The first event drew 50 to 75 families, while last year’s attracted about 100 families and distributed 250 pairs of shoes. They’re hoping for 300 families this year.

Attracting kids through social media, ads and word of mouth – about 20 cycle through on a given Saturday – Galactic Tribe is one of those underpublicized answers to the question of what Black Buffalonians are doing to lift up their community.

It’s also one answer to the racial achievement gap that plagues schools. Miles said her company is working on developing data to document the increase in motivation and interest that they see anecdotally.

But the pride and interest in learning that the program sparks with its unconventional approach cannot help but carry over into the classroom for young people newly motivated to read and, in the process, to learn more about their history and their potential.

That makes the tribe’s use of the fictional Black Panther a solution to some of the real challenges facing Buffalo’s youth.

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Urban Affairs Editor/Columnist