Black History Month: Does it do more harm than good?

By Ellina Buettner and Karuga Koinange
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writers

Sharon Taylor was searching for a nearby park to take her hiking group to last Sunday when she stumbled upon an Underground Railroad presentation that was being held at the Cockeysville Public Library as part of Black History Month.

Taylor, a freelance journalist and outdoor enthusiast, was excited to watch the PowerPoint presentation by historian Scott Mingus because it fit nicely with the mission of her group Outdoor Afro, a national nonprofit organization that brings African Americans together in nature by, in part, hiking on trails that have significance in Black history.

The Feb. 18 event, Taylor said, gave her and the rest of her hiking buddies a chance to understand the historical significance of the trails they had traversed as well as to appreciate the accomplishments black people have made throughout history.

“Black History Month means an opportunity to highlight history, profound facts [and] people that would otherwise go ignored throughout the year,” said Taylor, who is from Randallstown. “Is just one month satisfactory? No, it’s not, but at least it’s some time.”

Not everyone feels the same.

Since the launch of Black History Month in the 1920s, there has been a growing number of critics who argue that the dedication of February to the recognition of black history may actually do more harm to African Americans than good.

These critics argue that Black History Month papers over the oppression that many black people still feel. They also argue that the existence of a special month allows American culture to reinterpret e some of the more “radical” ideas in black history to make them more acceptable to the country’s white majority.

Jared Ball, a professor of communication at Morgan State University, said that Black History Month started out as an honest endeavor by Carter G. Woodson, a journalist and historian who founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in 1915. But in the ensuing years, Ball said, the month has turned into an “empty symbol and propaganda.”

“What was originally meant to commemorate the contributions of African-descended people has been a way of masking the oppression those African-descended people have to continue to suffer [through] in a country that claims to praise their contribution,” Ball said.

He said the designation’s pure intention has become a tool used against blacks to keep them stuck in oppression. He said African Americans are in an ongoing power struggle, adding that elitists are using the popularity and symbolism of Black History Month against them.

“Black history is only [of] value to the extent that it supports the project of the United States,” Ball said. “And all the strands in history where black people and others have tried to radically alter the United States are ignored or left out.”

To support his point, Ball said African Americans have seen little progress in terms of access to wealth, employment, adequate education, health care, decent housing, clean water and food.

“Five white people in the country own more land than all of black America combined,” Ball said. “When you look at things like that, there’s no point really in commemorating a people that you consistently maintain in that level of equality.”

He said the celebration of Black History Month is ultimately a fraud unless American society takes steps to end police violence against blacks, stem increasing incarceration rates, and provide African Americans better access to education.

“We need to move past the symbol and get to actual material change,” Ball said.

“This is what Dr. [Martin Luther] King was clear about his whole life. He didn’t want monuments. He didn’t want celebrations. We want material redistribution of wealth.”

Kasai Rex, a local writer and African American history advocate, agrees that Black History Month is harmful because it is misrepresented and exploited. He said big corporations use the dedication to make a profit, and with that, decrease its value and importance.

“To take that two or three steps further and turn into, ‘I’m gonna sell this truck with an audio update of an MLK speech…’ just doesn’t add up,” Rex said. “To whitewash and sanitize stuff and to turn these people who are beaten, murdered and starved into mascots is really bizarre.”

Even though he is bothered by this commercial abuse, Rex said he is most concerned with the lack of access children have to the full scope of American history, which was the main purpose of launching Black History Month in the first place. He said he is also disheartened by the government’s efforts in stifling a broader discussion about the African American experience over the past 400-plus years.

“In America, we kind of love nostalgia but hate history,” Rex said. “That’s not entirely our fault collectively. I think our education system — the way history is taught — doesn’t make those connections. It’s super sanitized in some regards. It’s context-free in a lot of situations.”

Like Ball, Rex also blames this disconnection on the power structure. He recalls having to seek out African American history through his family members and other outside sources because he was not learning about it in school.

He said he didn’t realize how Eurocentric his education was until his father gave him a book by James Loewen entitled, “Lies my Teacher Told Me: Everything your American History Textbook Got Wrong.”

“[History is written by those in power], and those in power are interested in keeping themselves in power,” Rex said. “Even people who came to this country and were naturalized in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, that history is wiped out. They got to Ellis Island and they said, ‘Let me take your papers and cross out your real name and change it to something that’s more Americanized.’”

Hayward Johnson, a Pikesville High School teacher, said that while it’s true that much history reflects the elitist’s worldview, the public school system has made considerable changes in the last three to four years with regards to how history class is taught.

“In too many cases, we wait for Black History Month to happen and that’s when we do it [dig deeper into African American history],” Johnson said. “But even the more generic curriculum is infusing the pieces along the way, and not just black history, but other minority groups and their contributions to American history along the way too.”

She said teachers have been given more flexibility in writing their lessons than in previous years. With careful planning, Johnson said she’s been able to incorporate a deeper study of black history within the curriculum. She said she was also given the opportunity to teach an African American elective history course this year, and it’s been exciting for her to cover topics many of her students hadn’t learned about before.

“We didn’t talk a lot about MLK, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman,” Johnson said. “We did what the African American experience was for the regular person, not just the famous people. We did a whole thing on black cowboys and outlaws — that stuff nobody’s ever even heard of — and my students were like, ‘black cowboys, what are you talking about.’”

Even though things are changing, she says the extent to which African American history is taught depends on the school. She said she’s been able to teach a more involved education because Pikesville High recognizes the importance of diversity.

One reason that the history of marginalized groups is ignored or smeared in textbooks is because those books are often written by white men who incorporate the notion of whiteness directly into the underlying assumptions of the text, according to Towson University communication studies professor Erin Berry.

“We are bombarded with white history and American history consistently that does not always include marginality, and does not include the truth often times,” Berry said.

Berry said some of the information disseminated to the masses is fraudulent because there is a lack of diversity among authors. She said it’s crucial that all perspectives are accounted for when talking about the history of different cultures and time periods.

“We often hear about slavery, the Trail of Tears and other oppressive movements that have happened in a certain way,” Berry said. “Those people who oftentimes write the book are the people who maintain this historical idea of whiteness in the country. We have to be equitable in our conversations and presentations about history and who has contributed.”

Berry argues that the lack of accuracy and fairness in black history education is the foundation for black history being undermined as a whole. She said Black History Month is a bargaining chip used to downplay the significance of black history, although she said she refuses to let herself forget about the importance of it.

“A month cannot truly acknowledge everything that’s been contributed,” Berry said. “That’s not to say that black history is more important than white history, but the narrative has to be shifted. It starts in the classroom and starts in the home.”

Although she feels Black History Month implies that black and white history are separate, she looks at that division in a positive light because it puts an emphasis on the contributions of minorities in the United States. Berry said she understands the intention of Black History Month and appreciates the work put forward by Woodson and others to have the acknowledgment in place.

“Black history reminds people to remember that marginal folks helped to build this country and our place here is very important,” Berry said.

These points are not lost on students.

Joshua White, the president of Towson University’s Black Student Union (BSU), agreed that this separation during Black History Month is a good thing because it centralizes the celebration and adds a deeper meaning to it.

“Every day is Black History Month, but February is national Black History Month,” White said. “We imply that by saying it’s Black History Month, but we’re miscommunicating what the month actually is. It’s a national spotlight on black history. Every month we look at the past and see that black people have contributed something [whether it’s] art, technology, law or science. Black people don’t just do things in February.”

White acknowledged that there have been several times this month when students have come into the office and asked if his organization will be doing anything special for Black History Month. White said he usually retorts that they will do what they have been doing every month.

He argues that more people in the black community should take on his stance of celebrating black history throughout the entire year, and that there needs to be more education about the origin of Black History Month because misunderstanding the root of the celebration hampers the experience.

“I don’t think as black people, we should limit ourselves to one singular month,” White said. “I don’t think we deserve that. Our ancestors don’t deserve that and American history in general doesn’t deserve that because we’re [not] giving all history justice.”

Taylor, the outdoor enthusiast with Outdoor Afro, appreciates the heated debate over Black History Month but said she still thinks the recognition is a good thing.

From a practicable perspective, she said, Black History Month at least forces a conversation and leads to events like the one she attended in Cockeysville last weekend that helped her trace some of the historical Underground Railroad routes back to existing hiking trails she and her fellow travelers have used.

She looks at February as a good opportunity for the country to further its knowledge about black history and learn how that information might affect people personally.

“As more people come to know about their own history the more excited they get,” Taylor said. “[It provides] a greater opportunity for people to start digging on their own – asking questions of their grandparents and great grandparents, going to their state houses, joining historical societies and looking things up, writing books and writing films and all those things that showcase information.

“Prior to having a Black History Month, it wasn’t as pervasive and we didn’t know our history,” Taylor added. “You get your bevy, your smorgasbord, your thanksgiving of black history in Black History Month. I think it’s fantastic. We can’t get enough.”