Black History Month: Mend It, Don’t End It

Hi folks, and welcome to another edition of TPL.  Happy Black History Month.

At least I'd like for you to enjoy it.

But if you're like me, you already know that February is going to be about four things: 
  1.  A whole lot of tired, patronizing ads from companies who see BHM as yet another vehicle to squeeze yet another dollar from your wallet.
  2.  A whole lot more idiots who will walk the earth believing that Mae Jemison was not the first black woman in space, but the mammy-cartoon character for a brand of pancake mix.
  3.  Even more idiots whose only tangible knowledge of the black history is slavery, Martin Luther King, and Barack Obama.  Or that sufficient commentary on the black experience derives from rap music, BET, The Cosby Show, Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton/whatever hot mess is calling himself in charge of the local or regional NAACP, and, yes, Barack Obama.
  4.  And yet even more idiots who, in spite of all I've said above (and there's so much more we could each contribute), will still question the need for a Black History Month in the first place.

Black men, Black women, this is our fault.

You read that right.  We only have ourselves the blame.

Part of the reason BHM is so fucked up right now is that we aren't teaching it right.  Sometimes I truly wonder if we're teaching anything at all.  I know we're not learning much.
(I mean, I appreciate the "Little Known Black History Facts" on the TJMS as much as anyone, but how many of us have actually gone out and ordered a subscription to American Legacy magazine?  You know, the source for all those facts you hear on the radio everyday?  Exactly.)

And that's just part of what's wrong with BHM.  Perhaps the most egregious offense is that, inexplicably, we've allowed not just (racist, far-right, and culturally indifferent--it is a must that I qualify this) white people, but just about anyne who is diametrically opposed to our collective interests to co-opt vestiges of our history.  Every time I hear some tripe from the mouths of a Dennis Prager or an L. Brent Bozell, someone who will never be mistaken for a friend of black people, or even (black man) Larry Elder to invoke MLK as a means to support the notion of black pathology, I want to vomit.  But what makes me actually do it is the knowledge that no one ever stands up to these people.

Are we that ignorant of our history, so derelict of our responsibility, and so unappreciative of our legacy that we're just gonna let it go for a pittance?  How are we supposed to expect others to respect where we've come from when we ourselves won't do it?  Nobody is going to our backyards to mow our lawns; pulling the weeds and trimming the hedges is our job, and ours alone.

Ironically, it was Carter G. Woodson's ideal that the day would come when there would be no need for a black history week, let alone a month.  But at the rate we're going, Tom Joyner will commemorate a Black History DECADE before I'm an old man.  (And that is the paradox for all you BHM haters.  The less you get us, the more you will get all that we've done in February.  So there.  You wanna see the end of Black History Month?  Learn black history.)

Black History Month used to be special.  It was a time when we looked back and shared our collective experiences and touched the embroidery of the threads our people wove into the American fabric.  Now it's been cheapened and marginalized.  More people know Rosa Parks as a rap song than the woman who sat down on a hot day in Montgomery.  (How even fewer people know about Claudette Colvin, who actually preceded Parks in protesting Montgomery bus segregation, is beyond criminal.)  Fraternities and sorrorities are more likely to hold house parties than encourage intellectual discourse in black homes.  Our institutions can organize rallies and boycotts in support of the Jena (La.) 6 or the Scott sisters of Mississippi,  but no NAACP member has yet demanded that the town of Scottsboro, Alabama commemorate the legacy of nine teenage boys who actually were victims of an injust legal system.  We can protest a raggedy ass flag depicting the defeated army of a long-forgotten empire (save the neo-confederate apologist groups out there), but say nothing about all those Confederate memorials across the South that I believe cause more harm to our self-esteem than whatever diaper South Carolina wants to fly over its state capitol.

This is the shit we've got to fix, people.  When the people who laud Bill Clinton as our, ahem, first "black" president refuse to hold him to task for the way he threw Sister Soulja, Lani Guinier and Joycelyn Elders under the bus, that's a problem.  When we fall all over ourselves about how hip-hop denigrates our women, but fail to acknowledge how early R&B, rock and roll, jazz, and the blues featured artists whose lyrics and lifestyles would make Eazy-E blush, that's a problem.  When we hold up those same yellowed and fading portraits of MLK, Lincoln, and Kennedy, and yap about how someone else got beat up and sprayed with high pressure hoses somewhere else, but have no knowledge about any black person of historical significance to your own fucking neighborhood, that is a problem.

When we lament how our children don't seem to know anything, but we haven't learned the things they should be taught; and we say that our children lack any respect for authority when we haven't shown them the type of person who's worthy of respect, when our history and culture are defined by one particular network that black people no longer own, we have a problem.

But, thankfully, with every problem comes a solution.  Black History Month as we know it can be fixed.  And it starts by reclaiming our history and our legacy from the brink.  Let's start getting involved again; let's start reading, discussing, and engaging each other in the issues that matter to us.  Let's challenge those people who dispense lies and half-truths about our history for their own selfish reasons.  Let's actually go out and learn something about somebody who made an impact in our own communities.  I know that is a lot harder for someone living in Swamp Fox, SC than it is for a cat in Atlanta, but it should also be that much more rewarding. Let's appreciate that the luxury of having such a rich history and heritage comes with the responsibility to see that endures.  Because black history is American history.  We were here before the Mayflower, we shed the first drops of blood for democracy, we fought bravely and honorably in every conflict this nation has ever fought.  We created American music, and redefined American athletics.  We changed the game in our own way, and often on our own terms.  That's something to be celebrated, not ignored.

So with this, I start my observance of Black History Month 2011.  Not from the puropse of seeing it fade into indifference, but out of the hope of seeing our history securely intertwined within the links of all things American, for that is the only way that BHM truly becomes obsolete.

May the next 27 days be fruitful and prosperous to all.