“I don’t want a black history month. American history IS black history”- Morgan Freeman.
February has been always noticed, since we were born, as ‘Black History Month’. In grade school, we recognized it as a time to focus on Black leaders, inventors, musicians, actors/actresses, athletes and more. Complete arts and crafts and English assignments related to them as well as Black History Programs. Now that we are adults.. how do we celebrate it?
Over the past two years on ‘Addiction’.. I’ve dedicated time and effort to post a different Black history person to focus on everyday along with a brief summary of who they are or what they did. This year was a little different. As much as I put time and effort into that (while being dreadfully busy on a full time job)… I noticed those posts would seem to get trampled by other posts of those focusing on music and or celebrity news. I would actually find myself stressed sometimes to find someone (especially information) who isn’t mentioned often among the masses, but needed to be noticed. I thought to myself this year… why would I do that? They (we) don’t care. I felt.. no.. you have to continue with the “movement”.. someone will read it. Then, I went right back to the negativity … I’m not putting any more energy into something people don’t care about.
So with that.. I decided at the beginning of the month that I would, this year, find black history events in the area and try to attend a few. That only resulted in me going to one out of the four I wanted to smh. Pathetic. Throughout the entire month, I had only made one post in regards to black history. I received a note from that saying “I can’t wait for your other black history posts”. I didn’t have the heart to share with them.. that wasn’t going to happen. I’ve had this particular post, though, planned for a few weeks and decided to wait until the last day of BHM to post.. to report my observations.
To have black history month is sort of exceptionalizing African Americans.. almost treating them with a certain amount of condescension
Would you care if Black History Month was eliminated? I went to see a remarkable play entitled “The Mountaintop” written and directed by the lovely Katori Hall.
This was not your ordinary “civil rights/MLK” play. It had a much deeper meaning and un expecting twist. Although, the “intermissionless” 90 minute play took place with only one scene and only two characters (both black), it was the most POWERFUL thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. What was interesting, outside of the play, was that the bulk of the audience were white people. How ironic. {I’ll complete a post on this later in full detail but any who}… that one component made me reflect. It’s “our” month… why are ‘they’ here and we aren’t?
