Keep Your February, I'm So Over It

Honestly, this month is ridiculous to me. I’m freaking American, not some weird hyphenated sub category version of American, I’m just as American as our slave owning fore(skin) fathers and personally you can keep the coldest shortest month to yourself and just include my (our) story in American History, which by the way is not a simple sad tale of Africans brought against their will, MLK blvds and ‘by any means neccesary’ speeches. The first string of Africans ‘came to America as indentured servants and Africans for many years were similar in legal position to poor English indentured, who traded several years labor in exchange for passage to America. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom. They raised families, marrying other Africans and sometimes intermarrying with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards’. Doesn’t get more ‘American’ than that.

Keep Your February, I'm So Over It
Contributor Chanel Kennebrew

When will the folks that created the canon of educational ‘American History’ realize that the history of diasporic people in America is essential American History? Not a subcategory, elective or group of info that should be reviewed in February. This country was built on the backs of many from day one and a ‘lil negro’ month isn’t going to solve anything.

I totally understand where the notion of ‘Black History’ month came. I get that it was, in its day, a way to include a part of American History that isn’t generally included in standard American History Books, but I feel this needs to be reevaluated. I have a really hard time holding American slave owners in high esteem, sorry kids, I can’t get down with George Washington, his cherry tree and slaves. Can’t get down with Thomas Jefferson, and his rejection of his black off spring. That’s great, he purchased Louisiana, but honestly stop asking folks to excuse these crimes against humanity to see the ‘great contributions’ these men made. I can’t get over it even if it was the way of the day. You would be able to do a lot of great things too, like building a nation, if you had slaves.

Imagine if we had a European American Month, we took a break from learning about the Indigenous American People, Latinos (15.8% of the American population) and the folks who traveled from Asia and Africa (12% of the American population) to support industries of transportation and agriculture. In this lil month we could put up picture of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and tell the tale of how they were all folks who couldn’t move up the social ladder in Europe but they ‘persevered’ with the help of the indigenous folks and their African ‘comrades’ and build a white house and a lil constitution and such. Imagine if we requested that Jewish youth to look beyond the concentration camps and appreciate Hitlers medical and gene research contributions to the world. Can’t imagine that would do too well. America has a short rough history let’s tell the tale a differently from now on.

"Imagine if we requested that Jewish youth to look beyond the concentration camps and appreciate Hitlers medical and gene research contributions to the world."

Why is it important to re-write history? Because it plays a vital role in how young people see themselves in society. Everyone wants to come from something great (though most folks don’t). Which is one of the ways we build our self esteem. History is a matter of perspective, now that more perspectives are being accepted it would serve the American people to include these in ‘American History’. Besides the dates, and social impact no one really knows exactly what happened in the 1700s and 1800s, we weren’t there and only have perspective on the situations; so if the tale is giving some youth a negative impression of their position in the land they were born in, then it’s simply creating monsters.

Black history month points out how segregated we still are and honestly I’m over, you can keep February.

Tags: Afro-punk, black, history, it, month, over

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Comment by Amadaneus on February 6, 2011 at 2:12pm: That's a good call Muka.

It's crazy how even more split up shit gets when you analyze the name of the event. Maaaan.

Comment by muka on February 6, 2011 at 9:45am: From the comments I've read and the contents of this article, it seems to me that Black History Month is more associated with Black American history as opposed to Black history as a whole. I understand that many major events occurred in the United States but there are other countries in the Americas that experienced many changes at the hands of black Africans and the likes. The Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, Haiti and other countries just to name a few. In all this I haven't even mentioned other major events happening on the African continent. In my opinion I'd probably rename Black History Month to Black American History Month or include the rest of the world's history in Black History Month.

Comment by Fashionfreak on February 5, 2011 at 9:53pm: i don't black history month segregates us from the rest of the us. yeah there is no such thing as white history month but being that the term 'american' is eurocentric you gotta hyphenate the shit! it is what it is.

although i don't consider any white person an actual american....native americans are....

Comment by Ryan Jarmon on February 5, 2011 at 7:53pm: Damn.

Comment by corey mcdaniel on February 5, 2011 at 7:24pm: You have a revisionist history viewpoint my friend, like you said you wernt there, and slavery was an ugly truth of MAN, it didnt start with Africans being enslaved in America, it goes back to the beginning of man, im just glad man evolved enough to the point where slavery was scene for what it was, the ultimate barbaric action, and a hindrance to the progression of society. Yeah, we come from slaves, so what???? In less than One Hundred years after gaining freedom, The worth of black people was clearly evident, we're good for more than just picking cotton, we were and are just as important as any other race in this world, and there's only one race that can say they overcame as much as we did, and we're still here!!!!! Love yourself, please, its good to be black, as a matter of fact its the best :)

Comment by corey mcdaniel on February 5, 2011 at 7:12pm: Dont look at it just from yours eyes, you have to look at it from the eyes of the people who came up with Black History Month and why they did it. And Black History doesnt just point out the negative events in Black History, its a celebration of the greatest race in the history of man, the American Negro!!!!! Quit focusing on negativity, or quit letting society tell you that Black people should be viewed in a negative light, the majority of us are positive contributors to society, media only focuses on the ignorant section of our race, its propaganda, DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE!!

Comment by Roni Zulu on February 5, 2011 at 4:53pm: I'm over it and agree with you 100%.

"But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man."

~Sydney Poitier(John Prentice) , Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, 1967

Comment by Rlo Lopez on February 5, 2011 at 2:16pm: black history month is a whitewash.

Comment by Geoff on February 5, 2011 at 9:34am: Carter G. Woodson originally promoted Negro History Week. The week he intended it for coincided with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. He never intended for it to evolve into Black History Month. Woodson's hope was that the week would be eliminated after Black history would became a fundamental part of American history.

Comment by Amadaneus on February 4, 2011 at 6:24pm: You can't celebrate your differences or your similarities without making them visible. I can see why you'd say that Black History month seems like something that segregates us from the rest of the U.S., but if the U.S. was right with itself, and everyone was truly free to express themselves, there wouldn't be a problem with February being connected to black history. If that's the place we're trying to get to, why give a damn about us having a month. We should be trying to get everyone else their own time time to celebrate their history, no?

I thought what you were trying to say was how Black History month is a double edged sword at first, but I think you missed this: while the entirety of Black history in the U.S. or the world can't be celebrated in just one month, the whole of European history is celebrated just about every day of every year in this country.

Black people created Black History month. We created it to honor people who weren't considered part of American history. And that thinking still isn't outdated, given how Eurocentric America still is.

If we make more room for non-white people to be part of American history, then I think that addresses the issue you're talkin about. Not getting rid of black history month.