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

[Bill Howe]

As an Asian American:

   - when I stop getting anguished calls from parents telling me horror
   stories about their black children being tormented and assaulted for being
   black then we can cancel Black History Month.
   - when I never again hear a story about how a white man jumped at a Super
   Bowl Party (where black people were in attendance) and yelled at the T.V.
   --- " Stop that [N-word]" then we can cancel Black History Month.
   - when I never again hear new minority employees referred routinely as
   "Affirmative Action Hires" then we can cancel Black History Month.
   - when I never overhear white men refer to black people driving luxury
   cars as drug dealers then we can cancel Black History Month.
   - when I never again have a young black man apologize for being late to
   class because he was stopped DWB then we can cancel Black History Month.
   - when we stop sending hoards of young black men to fill our prisons then
   we can cancel Black History Month.
   - when in Connecticut, we close the largest achievement gap between white
   and black students in the country then we can cancel Black History Month.
   - when we stop creating Diversity Committees and fill them mainly with
   people of color then we can cancel Black History Month.
   - when we stop asking just the people of color to attend diversity
   workshops then we can cancel Black History Month.
   - when I never again hear a beautiful young black woman tearfully tell me
   that some white people have shaken her hand and then tried to discretely
   wipe their hands clean on their pants then we can cancel Black History
   Month.
   - when I never again spend months crafting a grant application just to
   have all references to multicultural education and culturally responsive
   teaching strategies edited OUT then we can cancel Black History Month.
   - [... feel free to add your own } then we can cancel Black History
   Month.




On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 10:14 AM, Anselmo Villanueva <
anselmo.villanueva at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> 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."
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