Chadwick Boseman died on August 28, 2020
I don’t believe in “race.”
But.
The last proper vacation I took was almost two years ago. I went to East Asia, where I spent six days in Seoul, then went to Tokyo for four days, then returned to Seoul for another four days.
I first arrived in Seoul on October 31, 2018.
Halloween.
My host in South Korea, a friend I’ve known since childhood named Mitchell, loves Halloween. It’s his favorite holiday.
“Have your costume ready!” he told me. He planned for us to go bar hopping in costume. Halloween isnt really observed by most Koreans, but it is broadly recognized by millennials and younger, an increasing number of whom participate. Still, given my previous sojourns abroad, I was worried about standing out more so than I already do as a black man.
Those fears would come to naught.
Mitchell dressed up as Spider-Man.
I was Black Panther.
His costume was, like, professional level costume work. It cost something like $700 dollars.
Mine was a graphic Lycra bodysuit. It cost something like $70.
We hit the town, and EVERY passer-by wanted pictures with him in particular. Some wanted pictures with me, too, or with the two of us together. It was the first time I was ever a locus of attention in what felt like a good, positive way that was fun for everyone.
But the best part?
It seemed that everyone I made eye contact with gave me a “Wakanda forever” salute and a smile.
I spent years in the Middle East. Every country I visited made me feel alienation on account of my blackness at some point.
The first—and heretofore only—place that I have been where I felt my specifically American blackness was a boon was Paris. I felt invisible and anonymous in the way that is typical for western global cities whenever I was by myself and minding my own business (unlike in the Middle East, where blackness can make you a target for harassment even if minding your own business). Whenever I opened my mouth in Paris, though, and people grasped that I was American, the experience was invariably a pleasant and welcoming one.
But that strange night in Seoul—dressed in a cheap costume signaling an affinity for a fictional, syncretic totem of global blackness (which, just so we’re clear, is a concept that merely compounds the world-historical goofiness of inventing “race” and blackness in the first place)—was the first, and will presumably be the only, time that people reacted positively to me and my blackness quite apart from any knowledge of my nationality. There I was, in homogenous Seoul, a random black person bedecked in a pop symbol of black greatness, and many a random Korean saluted me as such.
It felt... surprisingly good.
And I have Chadwick to thank for that.