To me, at least in some ways and I may be way off base here, but I thought T'Challa was meant to represent an Martin Luther King, Jr. type, while Erik was more the Malcolm X type, more militant like, well, the (real) Black Panthers. That is not to say Malcolm X was a villain, I honestly don't know enough to say other than knowing his approach to civil rights was decidedly more disruptive than the philosophies of MLK.