So you wouldn’t mind white Wakandans? One or two Vanilla Panthers? How about caucasian voodoo gods, or demons of Japanese myth? They’re fictional too.

Of course that would be silly, and we both know why. Tolkien’s work is explicitly based on Norse myth and the peoples of Northern Europe, who were and are quite real. He wrote about these intentions and influences at length.

There’s no need for writers to rely on European culture as a crutch. I’d personally love to see more epics set in the Mali Empire, Ghana Empire, or Kingdom of Dahomey. Sub-Saharan Africa has lots of its own rich mythology, too. It seems bizarre that besides Black Panther, the most I’ve seen these stories represented on TV is still the 1990s PBS series “Wishbone”.