![]() It’s that question that is central to Sam’s journey in the penultimate episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, aptly titled “Truth.” It’s not enough that Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) handed Sam Wilson the shield at the end of Avengers: Endgame. Why is that? Why do I feel unease about the American flag yet find myself so drawn to the stories and legacy of Captain America? Yet, despite this, Captain America has remained one of my favorite comic characters. What reason do we have to feel patriotic? After the past four years, patriotism has become ever more difficult to admire as those white stripes let more and more red in. It’s not anti-patriotism, rather a patriotic-reluctance. Even as we enjoy our status as Americans, and have love for Americans, there is the incongruous fact that patriotism is a hard pill to swallow whole. It’s an often unspoken truth that comes with being Black in America. Bradley’s words are, for so many people, an acknowledgment of something etched into the racial memory of a large population of America. “Those stars and stripes don’t mean nothin’ good to me,” Isaiah says. So how does Sam contend with an America that desperately wants status quo, be it Steve Rogers, John Walker, or another blonde-haired and blue-eyed white man? Solutions are confrontational, solutions are painful and solutions prevent a return to status quo. We had a Black President, right? Yet, a Black President alone, much like a Black Captain America, isn’t a solution. And there are still far too many people clinging to the idea of “good cops,” and to the idea that systemic racism has been improved upon. After nearly a year of Black Lives Matter in the spotlight, a year of protests, and politicians calling for changes in policy, we’re still seeing Black and brown people, children, murdered by cops. How can we fight with the future when we’ve yet to reckon with the past? That’s a question that has weighed heavily on me this past week. Progress is the great American symptom of mankind’s illness, an illness that enables us to forget history, to believe that past is past. Yet, there is security found in the illusion of change: an illusion that has kept the American dream alive, just as it has kept iconic comic book characters, forged in the image of white excellence, alive, and always viable for a return to status quo. Deep down Sam knows that, and as a Black man in America, I am reminded of that fact on a weekly basis. But the truth is that very little has changed between the 1950s and modern-day America, the country has just gotten a little better at hiding its true face with the mask of civility. Sam believes, or at least wants to believe, America has made progress since the days of Isaiah’s captivity. ![]() “You think things are different? You think times are different?” Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) asks Sam Wilson ( Anthony Mackie) when confronted with the possibility that his life as a government experiment, and prisoner, no longer have to remain a painful secret. ![]()
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