Introduction

It’s February, so once again history teachers will be dusting off their syllabi about The Civil Rights Movement in honor of Black History Month. On the surface, focusing on Black history for a whole month seems a worthwhile endeavor, until you realize the same figures get trotted out every year: Meager, Malcolm, Martin, and Rosa Parks being the chief ones.

Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that Black History Month is really an excuse for white people to alleviate their white guilt for the shortest month of the year. Then they go back to ignoring Black people and their issues outside of posting #BLM and related hashtags, all while maintaining systems of white supremacy that they benefit from.   

Furthermore, by focusing almost exclusively on The Civil Rights Movement and its nonviolent resistance, it leaves out the contributions of Black people before and after this era. In particular it erases the ongoing struggles against police brutality and social injustices that Black people are engaged with today. For these reasons, and other I’ll explore shortly, Black History Month should be canceled.   

The Problems with Black History Month

First, by segregating Black history from the larger historical discussion it serves to further paint Blacks as the other. Blacks in America have never been accepted as fully American precisely because of racist views that say whites built this country, when the opposite is true. Were it not for the free labor extracted from African enslaved persons, America wouldn’t be the richest country in the world. But Black people are more than slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. We’ve fought and died in nearly every war since the founding of this country, yet most history classes fail to mention this or gloss over it.

Second, removing Black history from American history gives cover to the myth of the Founding Fathers being akin to gods. The fact is while Jefferson wrote, “All men are created equal,” he was raping his slave, whom he fathered several children with, which his white descendants deny to this day. Moreover, when it came time to write the Constitution Jefferson wrote that slaves were only three-fifths a person for the purpose of representation.

 Likewise, the other funding fathers owned slaved or had owned them, and those that didn’t own slaves had equally repugnant views on anyone who wasn’t a white, protestant, landowning, male like them. The fact remains racism is woven into the fabric of this country and trying to confine it to only the evils of slavery and Jim Crow provides a convenient excuse for people to claim racism is no longer a problem. Afterall, we elected a Black president, didn’t we?   

Third, Black history didn’t begin or end with The Civil Rights Movement. We were kings and scholars, astronomers and scientists. Moreover, without Black people there would be no blues, jazz, rap, hip-hop, or rock. By focusing on this era so much, we do a disservice to all the Black figures who came before and after it. It’s as though all the accomplishments of Black folks before and after the ‘60s doesn’t count. So much of Black history has been lost or destroyed, so why not embrace all of it instead of a sliver of it?

Black History and Respectability Politics

The other problem with Black History Month is that it focuses on people such as Rosa Parks and MLK, Jr. and plays into the notion of respectability politics and how if only Blacks acted like them, then racism would be solved. As Professor Robert Louise Gates, Jr. can tell you, being educated and speaking the Queen’s English doesn’t stop you from being racially profiled by the police. Nor does it stop bigoted whites from viewing you as subhuman and acting on said bigotry to lynch you as happened to Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, and Sandra Bland.

A lot of good Black History Month did them.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how Black people act; we will always be seen as less than by a segment of white America unless we burst the bubble of white supremacy. You can move out of the ghetto, go to Ivy League schools, and still get called the N-word.

Respectability politics in regard to Black History Month is an excuse the Black bourgeois uses to absolve their white friends of their racism and white privilege. Oh, they changed their avatar to a Pan-African flag? They must be tres woke. Never mind their microaggressions, or that time they asked if you could score them weed/coke. Never mind you’re their only Black friend. They’re good people because they use all the right buzzwords and are up on the latest hashtags, despite shutting you down everything you bring up Black issues like the school-to-prison pipeline and the prison industrial complex, financial redlining, and discriminatory hiring practices.

They can’t be racist because you like them, and they aren’t setting fire to a cross on your lawn. It’s this level of lip service to equality and racial justice that respectability politics coupled with Black History Month allows. It promulgates the myth that racism is a thing of the past, and that we live in a post racial world. As the Nazis marched on Charlottesville, VA in 2017, and the recent armed insurrection on the Capitol have shown us, white hatred and rage are still with us. So how do we move forward?   

A Road Forward

Instead of relegating Black history to one month and one subject, why not incorporate it into every subject year-round. In chemistry class you could talk about the accomplishments of George Washington Carver in that field. In biology you could talk about the work of Ernest Everett Just. In social studies you could explore the various members of the Harlem Renaissance and join with the Language Arts teacher to give them assigned readings of these figures’ work and those of contemporary black writers to compare and contrast. You could also tie lectures into what current Black scientists, artists and other professionals are doing in their fields. And when it comes to History, talk about all the ways Black history is American history and stop focusing on the same figures and era.

Tell the truth about America.  

Whites didn’t build this country, immigrants and enslaved Africans did. Whites didn’t civilize Africans; they raped, looted, and plundered our cultures and claimed it as their own, as they’ve done with every civilization they’ve encountered. This isn’t a white country; it’s a country of immigrants, which whites stole from the indigenous peoples already here. Only by shouting these truths can we have an open and honest discussion about racism in America and move forward.

Conclusion

Honestly, every month should be treated like it’s Black History Month because Black History is American History and shouldn’t be treated like something separate from the whole of America’s history.

Yes, we should study the past to inform our actions in the present, but we shouldn’t get so caught in it that we forget to live in the here and now. We also should be looking towards the future and what it means for America to no longer be a majority white country and all that entails.

 Throughout history there have been episodes of white racial violence whenever Blacks and others have made political and economic gains. And after the attack on the Capitol, now more than ever it needs to be reiterated that Blacks are every bit as American as anyone else in this country. So, this February remember Black history is American history.