As soon as Black History Month begins Feb. 1, there is inevitably someone who asks, “why do we have a Black History Month?” or “why don’t we have a White History Month?”
Both questions have the same answer: Because the Western world teaches and studies a primarily white-washed, Eurocentric history that erases or minimizes the contributions of people of color.
Case in point: How many of us had heard of Katherine Johnson before the film Hidden Figures came out?
Not many. And she was a West Virginia native whose work literally put a man into space. We should have been bragging to the world for decades how this mathematical genius came from our state, the way we flaunt Homer Hickam.
At a WVU panel discussion last week, former NASA engineer Keri Knotts said that, during her training at NASA, Johnson’s work was never mentioned. In Knotts’ words: “It mostly involved the figurehead astronaut crews from way back when, so the white men.”
White people, predominantly white men, dominate the historic narrative. Too often, the involvement of people of color, especially women of color, is overlooked.
Black History Month is a time we intentionally unbury Black contributions, tell Black stories and celebrate Black culture. Black history is American history, but we have not treated it as such. To the average school child, Black history begins at slavery and ends at civil rights. But Black history is much longer, more complex and beautiful than that.
Black history is thousands of years of history on the African continent — cultures and traditions that have survived hundreds of years of colonization and diaspora. Black history is songs and stories and superstitions that could once be traced to specific tribes, though that knowledge may now be lost. Black history is knowing the borders of modern African countries were imposed by colonial powers, in total disregard of original boundaries.
Black history is the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s — writers Langston Hughes and Georgia Douglass Johnson, musicians Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington and so many others — the hip-hop revolution of the 1970s and every Black influence on the arts and sciences that doesn’t get recognized.
Black history is every person of color who faced violence for asking to be treated equally, every person of color who had a door — literal or metaphorical — slammed in his or her face and everyone person of color who shattered barriers.
Black history is the intrinsic knowledge that your experience in the world is impacted by the pigmentation in your skin.
Until Black history becomes a seamless part of the history we learn and teach — as common and accepted as the Eurocentric traditions we accept as the foundation of our civilization — we need a designated time to bring it to the forefront of people’s minds, to showcase all that is usually ignored. That is why we have Black History Month.
