(NAME-MCE) Critics Seek End to Black History Month

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Published: February 9, 2009

http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2009/02/09/237001nfeusendingblackhistorymonth_ap.html?tmp=704201538
Critics Seek End to Black History Month

PHILADELPHIA, PA (AP) — Should America's Black History Month itself fade
into history?

Many have long argued that African-American history should be incorporated
into year-round education. Now, claims that Black History Month is outdated
are gaining a new potency, as schools diversify their curricula and
President Barack Obama's election opens a new chapter in the nation's racial
journey.

"If Obama's election means anything, it means that African-American history
IS American history and should be remembered and recognized every day of the
year," says Stephen Donovan, a 41-year-old lawyer.

Ending "paternalistic" observances like Black History Month, Donovan
believes, would lead to "not only a reduction in racism, but whites more
ready and willing and able to celebrate our difference, enjoy our
traditions, without feeling the stain of guilt that stifles frank dialogue
and acceptance across cultures."

Yemesi Oyeniyi, a 40-year-old stay-at-home mother, says that Black History
Month feels like it's only for blacks, "and therefore fails to educate the
masses of non-blacks."

"I mean, now there is a Hispanic History Month and quite honestly I haven't
paid more attention to the history of Spanish-speaking Americans any more
now than I have in the past," she says. "I think it all should be taught
collectively — every month."

The black historian Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in 1926,
seeking to build self-worth in an oppressed people, preserve a marginalized
subject, and prove to an America steeped in racism that children of Africa
played a crucial role in modern civilization.

Woodson chose February because it contained the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln
and Frederick Douglass (which belies long-standing jokes about Black History
Month being relegated to the shortest month of the year). Woodson's
organization, now called the Association for the Study of African American
Life and History (ASALH), expanded the observance to a full month in 1976.

It has now become a fixture in American education and culture — complete
with the requisite commercialism — even as the shift in labels from Negro to
black to African-American indicates the evolution of attitudes meant to be
shaped by the event.

Obama released an official proclamation on Feb. 2 lauding "National African
American History Month" and calling upon "public officials, educators,
librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month
with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs that raise awareness
and appreciation of African American history."

Daryl Scott, chairman of the history department at Howard University and
vice president of programming for ASALH, says Black History Month is still
needed to solidify and build upon America's racial gains.

"To know about the people who make up society is to make a better society,"
he says. "A multiracial, multiethnic society has to work at its
relationships, just like you have to work at your marriage."

"I don't see it going away," said Spencer Crew, a history professor at
George Mason University, adding that a diverse year-round history curriculum
can still be augmented in depth during Black History Month.

"There's a Women's History Month," Crew said. "No one would argue that we
don't need to be reminded of women who have done things that are important."

Racial attitudes can also vary greatly from person to person and place to
place.

Lee Eric Smith, the first black editor of the University of Mississippi
student newspaper, isn't ready to get rid of Black History Month, "because,
to start quoting cliches, those who don't know their history are doomed to
repeat it."

"If Mississippi ranks last in more categories than I want to talk about, at
the same time, so many issues we're facing are rooted in not understanding
how these problems came to be in the first place," says Smith, a native
Mississippian.

Mississippi memories point to a different America where, in response to
institutionalized racism, concepts like Black Power and the Afrocentric
holiday of Kwanzaa were created. As that racist reality faded, so did many
of those creations.

Obama's triumph, to some, means that we can all put other assumptions — like
the need for Black History Month — behind us.

"I propose that, for the first time in American history, this country has
reached a point where we are can stop celebrating separately, stop learning
separately, stop being American separately," Detroit Free Press columnist
Rochelle Riley wrote in a Feb. 1 column calling for an end to Black History
Month.

At Daniel Warren Elementary in Mamaroneck, New York, kindergarten teacher
Jane Schumer has dedicated many hours this year to the story of Wangari
Mathai, a Kenyan activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for leading
a movement that planted millions of trees in Africa.

Schumer connected Mathai's story to Obama, who planted a tree in her program
and whose father was from Kenya. She connected Mathai to Martin Luther King
Jr., who like Mathai was jailed for fighting injustice.

Schumer doesn't have any special black history plans for February.

"It can't be contrived," says Schumer. "It's a way of thinking, a way of
life ... to me, the whole year has built up to this month ... the emphasis
we have is what people would want to accomplish with Black History Month."

Steve O'Rourke, who has a kindergartner at Warren Elementary, says his son
wants to ask Mathai, "You and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. both went to jail
for doing the right thing. What did it feel like to be in jail?"

"Whenever we denote something as belonging in a certain month, it becomes
tempting to say it belongs in that month alone ... ," says O'Rourke.
"Ideally I would like us to have a common rather than compartmentalized
history."

New York is among several states that have passed laws mandating or
encouraging teachers to broaden their history classes. New Jersey was the
first to do so, in 2002, after Assemblyman Bill Payne conceived and wrote
the Amistad Commission bill, named after the Africans who took over their
slave ship, ended up in Connecticut and won freedom in court.

Several years later, many New Jersey teachers were unaware that the law
existed, and many who wanted to comply did not have the resources or
knowledge to diversify their lessons, Payne says.

Next fall, New Jersey's Amistad Commission will deploy a new set of
Internet-based lesson plans for teachers to use statewide.

"I'm concerned about black and white kids' education," says Payne, who is no
longer in the legislature and travels the country lecturing about his
Amistad Commission. "This is not a black history course. I'm taking about
U.S. history. I'm an American."

Yet even Payne thinks that Black History Month should remain, because "we
should not give up our heritage."

And it does seem unlikely that it will disappear anytime soon.

"Yes, we do need it for the time being, if only because we're in uncharted
territory," says Smith, the Mississippi native.

"We've just experienced a seismic shift in the identity of America," he
says, referring to Obama's election. "We're in the process of transforming
into something, we don't know exactly what that is yet. Until we have a
better grasp on that, it's hard to understand how we should teach history."