The spectacle of Black History Month
February 28, 2023
In 1926, Black historian and journalist Carter G. Woodson established Negro History Week, which has, over the years, expanded into Black History Month. With this week’s creation, Woodson wanted to commemorate the liberation and numerous achievements that Black people had attained, especially after their intense struggle with slavery and its aftereffects.
Today, in Black cultures across the U.S., Black History Month is a month to celebrate the accomplishments and achievements of Black Americans throughout history. In St. Louis, the city and its surrounding territories hold celebrations featuring St. Louis’s rich African American history to honor and acknowledge the millions of African Americans who struggled through racial oppression. At West, the Black Student Union (BSU) has held events that commemorate Black culture, something that senior and president of Parkway West’s Black Student Union (BSU) Lauren McLeod appreciates.
“The senior class of 2020 was very involved and engaged in BSU. [The group] was adamant about doing Black History Month activities. We did door decorating [and had] fundraising at basketball games at concessions. We also had a film night, [selling] tickets to watch ‘The Hate U Give’ in the cafeteria,” McLeod said. “It’s important to highlight our history and continue to uplift Black voices [to] work toward a more diverse and inclusive society.”
However, outside of the Black community, Black History Month is often an excuse to continue the whitewashing of Black history.
Leaders such as civil rights activists Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks have been continuously pushed forward as Black History Month’s token figures and have thus received some of the most whitewashing. In current times, their messages are ultimately simplified down to “everyone should be equal,” when, in fact, their points were far more nuanced and complex than that. Because of the whitewashing of Black figures and history, Black voices are constantly disregarded and passed over for an expurgated version of history that favors talk of “equality” and “harmony” rather than recognizing the real struggles that Black people have faced at the hand of systemic inequalities.
It is perhaps this whitewashing that contributes to Americans’ lack of knowledge of Black figures and history in America. Furthermore, this directly influences misunderstandings of why and how Black History Month is celebrated, leading to the all too well-known counter of “What about White History Month?” despite the typical year-long focus on white history.
Furthermore, the whitewashing of Black History Month sketches Black history as history that must be sanitized to be palatable for the general public. It’s not uncommon to see people pushing racial inequities and inequalities to the side by utilizing bland, same-old narratives: that race does not matter, that people are “color blind,” that racism is over because there is no longer legal, race-based slavery or segregation. But the truth is that race does matter, and it has for a long time. It’s mattered in the numerous gaps in healthcare that lead to the Black maternal mortality rate being significantly higher than both non-Hispanic white women and Hispanic women; it’s mattered in the historical redlining that led to negative effects on today’s students’ education; it’s mattered in the Black-white generational wealth gap that determines both economic security and political influence that a household can have.
Race, in a societal sense, matters, so “color blindness” isn’t the message that we should be emphasizing; instead, the message that we should all ultimately learn is that it’s better to embrace the differences of each group and that begins with learning about their history.