My mother is white and my father was black. I am not alone in this. I grew up in the Bronx, New York City. Born in 1967. A relatively safe time and place for a brown girl of ambiguous ethnicity. As the mother of two little brown girls, I like to believe that race doesn't matter much. But the election of Barack Obama woke me up. Ignorance is everywhere. Race labels ring in my ears. They stick and they stain. Even when they fade. This is my rant, from “post-racial America”. Hoping to shed some light.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Black History Month Bash

I still don't like Black History Month.
I last wrote on the topic in 2011, and my feelings haven't changed. Well, maybe they've intensified. It's not the recognition of Black History that I don't like; it's the objectification of Black History that makes me crazy. Example: the African-American sections in our libraries and book stores. The systemic segregation of black stories is not a constructive approach to Equality.

Black history is a critical component of American history and world history.
Isolating black history appreciation, by formally confining it to a month in the calendar, trivializes and limits its importance. Forty years ago, this kind of focus read like a best effort at long-overdue acknowledgement. But we now have a black President of the United States! Will his story be relegated to African-American studies twenty years from now?

I realize that Black History Month provides a certain "uplift" in the minds and deeds of many. But our collective energy would be better spent improving school curricula and social policies for the here and now, in the interest of true equality for everyone.

It seems the constructive works of our contemporary artists and activists are overshadowed by the destructive acts of the few, both in the media and in daily conversation. Maybe what we need in 2015 is a Modern Heroes Month.
Posted by BROWNGIRL at 3:13 PM 0 comments
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