A number of Writers looked to the film's subtext and what it said about African history, colonialism (including post-colonialism and neocolonialism), and tensions between African and African-American cultures. Patrick Gathara, writing in The Washington Post, described the film as offering a "regressive, neocolonial vision of Africa", which – rather than a "redemptive counter-mythology" – offers "the same destructive myths". Gathara highlighted the Africa that is portrayed as being divided and tribalized, with Wakanda run by a wealthy and feuding elite, centered upon "royalty and warriors", whose fortune comes not from its citizens' endeavors, skill or innate abilities, but from a "lucky meteor strike", and as a country which, despite its advanced technical abilities, does not evince any great thinkers, nor even a means of succession beyond lethal combat and primeval trials of strength. Gathara continued that the very idea of "Africa" is essentially of European creation, and concluded that "Despite their centuries of vibranium-induced technological advancement, the Wakandans remain so remarkably unsophisticated that a 'returning' American can basically stroll in and take over, just as 19th-century Europeans did to the real Africa ... [The film] should not be mistaken for an attempt at liberating Africa from Europe. Quite the opposite. Its 'redemptive counter-mythology' entrenches the tropes that have been used to dehumanize Africans for centuries. The Wakandans, for all their technological progress, still cleanly fit into the Western molds, a dark people in a dark continent".