Chadwick Boseman Gave Us Something We Had Not Had Before

That instinctive association is perhaps why Boseman’s death on Friday, following a four-year battle with colon cancer, struck me and so many others differently than other celebrity passings. The news sent almost every Black person I know into mourning. My social-media feeds filled up with images of Boseman’s face and the roles he’d played during his short, but rich, career.

Read: The profound heroism of Chadwick Boseman

This is not to say that the outpouring of grief has been specifically limited to Black people; part of what was so remarkable about the cinematic success of Black Panther was how widely it was watched around the world. Still, the film, and the characters within it, did feel uniquely ours. As such, Boseman’s death hits me hard. Part of it, I imagine, is that most people did not know he was sick. Part of it is that he was so young at 43, just getting started. But part of it is also that, in some way, he felt like our superhero. Amid a moment in which Black life feels particularly fragile, losing a Black superhero, even a fictional one, is especially destabilizing.

When I heard of Boseman’s death, I thought of my grandfather, who passed away at age 73 with colon cancer and Alzheimer’s coursing through him, and about my 3-year-old son, who was born 11 years after my grandfather’s death but who shares his wide smile. I thought, too, about how my son wore his Black Panther costume, a gift he had received for his birthday, for days without taking it off. How the outfit’s thin layer of polyester began to smell of toddler, Cheerios, and the new sweat of early summer. How he walked around the house shouting “I am the Black Panther!” to no one in particular. How he thought that keeping his mask on and pretending to be the Wakandan superhero would mean that his parents would finally let him jump on the couch (he was mistaken). What I think of most is how happy it made him, how his small body moved with unbridled joy through our home as he showed us how high he could jump, how fast he could run.

My son has not yet watched Black Panther, though I have shown him some of its nonviolent scenes online. He has seen Boseman’s face behind the mask. I don’t know how significant it is to him to see a superhero who looks like him, or who looks like me, but I imagine one day it might be. Or perhaps it won’t be significant at all, because he will grow up in a world with more than a handful of Black superheroes to choose from. If I’m being honest, part of the significance of the film, and of seeing my son in that costume, is what it means to me.

Read: What Chadwick Boseman and Lupita Nyong’o learned about Wakanda

Representation is not everything. I am acutely aware of its limits across American culture and politics. Representation will not prevent Black people from being killed by police. It will not reduce the racial wealth gap. It will not prevent Black people from being disproportionately affected by COVID-19. But neither is it nothing. As I wrote after watching Black Panther in 2018: “We should not confuse representation with political power, nor should we discount it.”