Black History is American History

Black History Month was created because African American history and culture were being overlooked due to racial prejudice. (http://historywithhilary.blogspot.com/2015/02/black-history-month.html) The observance of Black History Month became a national event when President Ford made it official in 1976. 

Photo: naacp.org

Today, teachers and students focus their attentions on influential African Americans during the month of February. While this is a great good, most Americans do not pay much attention to Black History Month because they are no longer in school.

In addition, Black History Month, like much of history, tends to succumb to the Great Man theory, looking primarily at the most influential African Americans like W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others, but what about the millions of unknown Africans and African Americans? Their everyday experiences laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement and, today, the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Photo: uab.edu

The United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent recently conducted a survey in the United States and their findings concerned the members. The report stated: "The colonial history, the legacy of enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the US remains a serious challenge as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent."

Groundbreaking new histories are exploring the degree to which America's economic system, North and South, was based on the exploitation of people as property, such as Edward Baptist's "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism".

Despite learning about notable African Americans while in school, the white majority continues to perpetrate racial injustices -- and a discussion of reparations seems necessary. (http://www.phillytrib.com/metros/u-n-panel-suggests-slavery-reparations-in-u-s/article_3f4a7074-e9d0-52db-8509-2a456bd993d5.html#.Vq1xso38_uo.facebook)

Photo: unipd-centrodirittiumani.it

Hopefully, Black History Month will someday be unnecessary because black history IS the history of America. But until that day, take the opportunity this month to study not just notable African Americans, but the experiences of all of Black America. Learn about what is driving Black Lives Matter, look at racial profiling policies, review drug laws that have disproportionately placed black men in jail and finally, consider your own thoughts and actions: are you a part of the problem, are you actively helping or are you standing on the sidelines just watching? White America needs to own up to the atrocities that were committed in our past.  

I am appalled at the way the white majority has treated African Americans throughout American history: for founding an economic system based upon the abomination that was slavery, for Jim Crow laws, for lynchings, for segregation, for racial profiling and for ignoring the struggles African Americans experience to this day.