Black History and What Have You

BLACK POWER
Originally uploaded by Sala B

It's three weeks into February and in case you did not know, February is Black History Month. I have worked very hard over the past three weeks to ignore it, not because I don't think it is important, but because I feel like it is trivialized and taken for granted. As we make our way through grade school, we are taught all of the great accomplishments African Americans have made to American culture, about acceptable Black people who changed the face of history, meaning we get Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglas, and Dr. King. We get the good, suffering, struggling to overcome while not too intimidating Black Americans in the history books. On the outskirts of history come the revolutionaries, the people who made it possible for the recognizable names in the history books (some of the following are also mentioned in history books, but as villainous foils to the prior group of Black History saints): Nat Turner, Malcolm X, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and Huey P. Newton. The thing about Black history, something I never really understood, is that it is American history, but for the purposes of rainbow hugging baby boomer legislatures who want to prove how far we've come from our days as oppressors, there is a month dedicated just to Black America.

Do you want to know what happens during this month? The Color Purple plays every night on BET; Roots will be played on PBS; In Living Color Marathon on Comedy Central; and HBO has a list of Black films on Demand. What used to be a period of time to reflect on Americans who were faced with greater adversity because of what they were born rather than who they are-- a time in which we bridge the gap of racial inequality and take responsibility as a nation for the travesty that was enslavement and second class citizenship (not just with African Americans)--is now a month of superfluous apathy guised as social understanding. I am thoroughly sick of it.

I want to get into all of the issues I have with the Black community, and I want to discuss in depth my loathing of White guilt and cultural appropriation. I want to be able to tell you all of the things that swim in my mind about what being Black and being American mean, but there really are not enough words and is no where near enough time for me to lay it all out for you in detail other than to say that Black history is American history and there are things that we have to own up to as Americans and not brush under the rug. We have a responsibility to ourselves, to our ancestors, and to our progeny to tell the story honestly and offer them options for the future.

I think I am over Black History Month forever, but I will never turn away from Black history... or any history for that matter. I learn something new every day about different cultures withn America. Our stories are told as fragments when we see them intertwine and tangle everyday.

American Black History recap:
Declaration of Independence defines the patriots as not being slaves -> American Constitution is ratified after compromise met on slaves counting as three-fifths a human being in order for the South to obtain more seats in Congress-> Slave trade outlawed-> Missouri Compromise-> Frederick Douglas-> Dredd Scott sues for his freedom and loses on the grounds that he is not a citizen of the United States and has no right to use the federal courts ->American Civil War breaks out-> Lincoln frees slaves in already free states-> Confederacy loses the war-> XIII & XIV Amendments passed making the newly freed slaves citizens and granting suffrage to Black men-> Reconstruction-> KKK rises in the South-> backlash to recontruction-> Plessy v. Ferguson-> Southern sharecroppers migrate to industrialized cities in search of jobs-> unions refuse to allow African Americans in and industrialists begin to use them as scabs-> Booker T. Washington & W.E.B. DuBois begin a debate that would last years on the correct path for Blacks in America-> Marcus Garvey & Pan African Movement-> National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-> Franklin D Roosevelt refuses to pass an anti-lynching law-> Jackie Robinson-> Brown v. Board of Education-> Emmett Till-> Rosa Parks & Montgomery Bus Boycott-> Little Rock 9-> Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. & Malcolm X pick up where Washington & DuBois ended their debate-> Ballot or the Bullet-> I Have A Dream & March on Washington-> Passing of Civil Rights Bill-> Assassination of JFK-> LBJ appoints Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court-> Malcolm X assassinated-> Dr. King assassinated-> Bobby Kennedy assassinated-> Black Panther Party-> Black Liberation Army-> Assata Shakur imprisoned-> Huey P Newton imprisoned-> Angela Davis imprisoned-> systematic murders of members of black parties by the police and FBI-> Vietnam war ends-> Rainbow Coalition-> Jesse Jackson runs for president-> Colin Powell becomes Secretary of State-> Condoleeza Rice becomes Secretary of State-> Barack Obama leads in polls to become Democratic Nominee for President of the United States