February is Black History Month. When I was in high school, this meant having an assembly where the whole school would listen to a speaker implore us to “celebrate” black history. Meanwhile, I would hear several comments to the tune of, “Why do we have a Black History Month? Why don’t we have a White History Month?” I didn’t know why then. I do now.
Black History Month is important because most people know very little about black history, aside from the fact that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “I have a dream.”
As Chris Rock said, “That’s all they ever teach in school about black people-Martin Luther King.”
From kindergarten to college, we are taught a history that is skewed decidedly to the white side. We learn that Christopher Columbus discovered America. Never mind that there were several million people living on the two continents in 1492. According to popular history, a place doesn’t exist until a white man representing a European monarch gets there.
The reason most of popular history is biased is that it was written by white men based on records kept by white men. Please understand that I am not accusing these men of being racist. It’s human nature to write your own story. The reason knowledge of black history has suffered is because very few black people are telling their story.
The next question I can remember from my high school assembly days is, “Why is black history important?”
My reply is that it is impossible to understand someone until you know where that person is coming from. Like it or not, a person’s race plays a big part in how that person views the world.
I think white people write off black history too easily. Yes, we’re really sorry about slavery and Jim Crow. But today is a new day, so why don’t we all just get along?
That argument makes a lot of sense. However, we forget how recently racial discrimination occurred. My parents went to segregated schools until they entered high school. For that matter, several students currently on this campus went to de facto segregated schools. I wonder how many public school districts in Mississippi have a disproportionate percentage of black students because the majority of the white kids go to private academies?
My only problem with Black History Month is that I don’t think it goes far enough. Why are we confining it to the shortest month of the year?
I have an idea. Remember those mandatory, semester-long, state history classes we took in high school? Why not have a companion class called “American Minority History”? For one semester, students could learn the very basics regarding the contributions blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Indians (referring to the subcontinent) and many others have contributed to the United States. Sure, it wouldn’t be close to comprehensive, but it just might help in understanding someone else’s perspective. After all, I’d like to think that Black History Month is just a start.