GROWING UP AS AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN KID in Virginia, I used to appreciate the collection of positive stories about black people I’d get in the paper and on TV around this time every year. Stories about schoolchildren like me reciting portions of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, for instance, or of volunteers receiving kudos for their work in the black community and praising the inspiration of King or George Washington Carver or Rosa Parks. While their accomplishments were extraordinary, at the end of another February I’ve reached the point at which I can no longer stand to see the “history” part of Black History Month interpreted so literally — so lazily .
I’m all for celebrating achievements. The problem is, with our eyes too firmly fixed on the past, we’re missing all the things black people are accomplishing right now.
Comments
I did appreciate that Black History Month is the shortest month of the year although it seemed longer, and I was WGBH finally stopped running "Eyes on the Prize" 24/7 for the entire month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3PJF0YE-x4
It is great to have "Black History Month" showing the accomplishments and contributions, however I look forward to the time ( although I will probably never see it) when we are all just Americans and color is not mentioned nor do people care.
I think it's time to integrate black history month into US History year. And while we're at it, let's include women's history and labor history. History should be inclusive, unfortunately it never has been. Perhaps herstory???
I watched a three-hour documentary on WGBH the other night about the women's movement. I consider myself a feminist and thought I was semi-knowledgable about the broad outlines of the movement. I was astonished at how much I don't know, and it made me think about the fact that the women's movement is so much less well-studied, celebrated and acknowledged as the civil rights movement. And the fact is there are few quarters left in society where being openly racist is tolerated (I realize there are still virulent pockets of it and that passive racism is still quite pervasive) but it's still ok to question whether women are as capable and worthy as men. The women's movement is not nearly as celebrated as the civil rights movement and in fact I think there is still a lot of ambivalence about it, even among women who have benefited from it (which is every woman in the US). We don't have a holiday to celebrate the accomplishments of women and acknowledge their struggle. Why don't we celebrate Susan B. Anthony's (or somebody else's) birthday with a holiday? I get what the author is saying about needing to move on past the staples - I just wish the women's movement was so fortunate.