It’s February! Happy Disenfranchised People of Color Month

American History Collage

It’s February –that time of year when we celebrate folks who happen to be born with extra pigmentation in their skin.  Insincere praise lavished on a group of people based on skin color, is not my idea of honoring the accomplishments of anyone. Black history is month is on par with adopt a cat month, or asbestos awareness month, it means little but says volumes –it says we don’t think of ourselves as part of America, but a separate entity, that needs to be recognized in order to feel validated.

Well, a celebratory month each year ought to appease the guilt some experience in regards to past wrongs done to Blacks in this country. Everyone feels great when talking about the triumphs of Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass; replaying speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, and showing that iconic picture of Rosa Parks being arrested. We see their images, hear snippets about what they did -than we pat ourselves on the back, fold up the tents and put that stuff away until the next year. But doesn’t all of the fake celebration miss the point? All of the people who are being honored fought so that we wouldn’t be judged by our color, so that we would be treated as equals, seen for who we are and not what we look like. Black History month does the opposite of what it sets out to do, it makes everyone see Black people as radically different than the rest of society, and because of the horrible way our ancestors were treated, we must be held to a different standard.

It is yet another way to separate us by race, to define us by the color of our skin and not the content of our character. There’s no need to separate Black History from American History, it is one in the same. The struggles and triumphs by Blacks are part of the history of The USA; Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver, Sojourner Truth and Daniel Hale Williams, accomplished what they did as Americans who happened to be of color. Their journey is a collective one, which exists in a nation that can go from enslaving Blacks to electing one President.

We don’t need empty celebrations; we need to start thinking of ourselves as part of this country, where our history stands next to that of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, not separate from them in some fish bowl that is the month of February.  This is a country where, we were slaves, and now we can accomplish things that our great great great grandparents prayed for, but never experienced. We have more to offer history than merely skin color; that simply relegates us to not much more than side show freaks, viewed from our cages like an endangered species every time February rolls around.

This isn’t a politically correct post, and some of you will be highly offended by it, but that is not my point. I’m writing this with the hopes that we begin to think honestly about race relations in our nation. To turn away from empty platitudes and end this celebratory monthly decree that gives us permission to be proud of who we are –well, at least in February. 

We should stop accepting pats on the heads from charlatans who claim to be spokesmen for Blacks everywhere, telling us that we can’t accomplish greatness because of our racial makeup; minimizing Blacks to one month a year, and to a legacy of victim hood and marginalization.

Alice from The Block