“You better think/Think about what you’re trying to do to me/ Yeah, think/Let your mind go let yourself be free.”
— Aretha Franklin
It is past midnight, when few reasonable and healthy people are still awake.
I have insomnia, so my television babysits me. There’s an endless trail of commercials — black folks eating hamburgers, driving cars, buying insurance, frolicking on beaches, guzzling Coca-Cola and more banality.
At first I think I’m dreaming, that I’ve died and gone to Jet/Ebony/Essence/Black Enterprise/Emerge hell. It must be a dream. Too many Negroes.
Only after I’m overcome with a familiar dread do I realize it’s Black History Month — the 28 days of the year when Negroes are lulled into thinking that majority culture really gives a frick about our culture/history because we “get” special programming on TV, culture-specific displays in book and record stores and the obligatory story or two in newsprint.
Like chicken feed, we’re tossed award shows on network television, albeit broadcast at some God-awful hour sufficient only for insomniacs and VCRs (i.e., “The Soul Train Music Awards,” “The Essence Awards” and “The NAACP Image Awards.”
Plus we see ourselves in a plethora of commercials or we’re “featured” in lame short segments that local stations nuke to death. You’ve seen them.
Local Negroes, sullen, grave-faced and taking themselves waaay too seriously, espouse some quasi-virtuous character trait like honesty, hard work or family values.
Puh-leeze. Like it’s a big deal that a Negro can be honest or hard-working or believe in family values.
Black History Month might be the biggest farce since reparations and the lamest and laziest attempt at reparations since the broken promise of 40 acres and a mule.
Remember America? We’re the country that turned its back on Rwanda when the Hutus were cutting a heinous swath of genocide against the Tutsis. This, in short, because Rwanda isn’t a nuclear or military threat. It wasn’t beneficial to the U.S. Rwanda had no oil, gold or other natural resource worth exporting, so we left our U.N. troops there, unarmed, to stand idly by while a bunch of black folks murdered tens of thousands of other black folks.
And this is who we entrust to respect our culture, heritage and legacy?
I’m fully aware of the argument in favor of Black History Month. Namely, that black history is scarcely taught (and even more rarely taught well) in schools; therefore, it’s an opportunity to pummel students (and teachers) with it for 28 days. If a teacher ain’t teaching it the other 11 months, will forcing his/her hand for 28 days make the lessons effective?
Also, many think it allows “us” to step up and bring black history to the fore.
But if you’re black, your history should automatically be at the forefront of your psyche and therefore your lifestyle. You should be living black history.
I also know that Carter G. Woodson invented Black History Week and there was a time when we needed it then more than we do now. Now, black parents (as well as white parents who’ve adopted black children or who are parents of biracial children) need to take responsibility and educate their children on black history at home just as there should be frank discussions about the world at large. If white parents want to hip their kids to black history, that’s cool, too. If not, hey, this ain’t a perfect world.
It’s my contention that history should be inclusive. If something is being disseminated, paint the whole picture with an accurate brush. Society was not, nor will it ever be built by one culture alone, and Black History Month is proof positive that integration has failed.
And Negroes? We need to stop waiting to be “given” a week, a month, a moment.
We are a minority. The root of that word is “minor.” Chances are, our children won’t be taught the literary contributions of Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Jamaica Kincaid, Octavia Butler, Charles Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Ishmael Reed, John Edgar Wideman, Sapphire, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gayl Jones, Toi Derricotte or any of the other literary phenoms exploding from my bookshelves.
More than likely they’ll be force fed Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes and, if they’re lucky, Ralph Ellison or Richard Wright. They’re the safe Negroes, the house niggas.
And shame on any Negro who, like pulling up to a pump at a gas station, fills up on blackness during Black History Month.
So, Negroes, listen up: Black History Month ain’t gonna make you correct, invigorate you enough to sustain you for the other 11 months you’ve been asleep or be substantial enough to fully embrace all of who we are. And white folks, don’t think you’re off the hook because you’ve gotten used to our 28-day docility.
Because our history is your’s. Just like your’s has been ours for centuries.
contact Kathy y. wilson: kwilson@citybeat.com
This article appears in Feb 14-20, 2001.
