A likely unpopular thought about Black History month

There was a thing floating around on Facebook commemorating Sandra Bland's birthday on February 7. I wasn't sure it was accurate, so I checked. It was. Happy birthday Sandra. A few days earlier, there'd been a thing commemorating Trayvon Martin's. His is/was February 5. Happy birthday Trayvon. During Black History months, martyrs like Sandra and Trayvon weigh heavy on my mind. And they aren't the only ones. In this month when we remember our contriubtions and our successes, how might we also say something about the ugliness of the soil in which we POC find ourselves planted? How might we also call to the attention of an unwilling public, the myriad ways in which we have overcome but they have yet to 'come over' or be converted to the idea of liberty and justice for all?  

I know that's not the usual  modus operandi for Black History Month, but I do wish we would try something different just one time. 

The thing that frets me about Black History Month is the way we focus exclusively on the ones who 'won' and the way we fail to (refuse to?) think about the ones who died before progress could be made; the women and men who died brutalized and enslaved; the women and men who died by lynching; the women and men who died terrorized. Perhaps Black History Month ain't for that. Perhaps, Black History Month is the month in which we cast all our burdens aside and celebrate MLK Jr., but don't think about his assassination or the social ills - many of them still very much in existence - that led to that violent death; we praise Maya Angelou, but don't think about the fullness of her story and her childhood trauma; we quote James Baldwin but don't consider his entirely reasonable perpetually rage; we remember Muhammad Ali, but fail to think too deeply about the attacks on his character and his loss of his place in the ring because he took a principled stand against the Vietnam War. And on and on the list goes. Marian Anderson, locked out of Constitution Hall? Paul Robeson and Jackie Robinson and their appearances before the House Unamerican Affairs Committee? Ta-Nehisi Coates, taking himself, his mind and his family to France? 

I'm not ungrateful, though don't get me started on the concept of 'gratitude' cuz that is a whole 'nother story by itself! I appreciate that we take 28 days to recognize the contributions of African Americans to America. I also realize that in this Trump era we should be glad we still have a month (he's the kind of guy under whose leadership a month could be one a day, and a dark one at that), but the whole BHM exercise makes me twitchy. 

I've watched the movie Remember the Titans about a dozen times. Seventeen years ago, I watched it with a White family and I think that's when my first sense of the problems with those images, ideas, and the celebration of the team's 'coming together' came home to me as being problematic. 

Imagine sitting surrounded by nice White people (and they really were some nice folk to me whom they knew. I don't know how they were to Black folk they didn't know and therein, I believe, is where one's I-don't-do-racist-things bona fides lie.), watching a movie about the psychological warfare a group of young men had to survive to play football; the psychological and physical risks a grown Black man had to face to do the job he knew he could do. Imagine further what's happening in these nice White folks' minds when the obligatory White Saviors do their obligatory White saving. 

Watching myself watching that movie in that company, I discovered what was wrong with movies like that and by extension BHM celebrations that leave out the filthy underbelly of America that gives rise to the triumph. True enough, Remember the Titans exposed much of the ugliness, but you know as well as I do that every White viewer sees him/herself among the Saviors,  the good guys. Everybody is one of the good guys. Much like, on MLK Day, every White person is quoting the I Have A Dream speech and pretending that had they been there, they woulda marched with Martin. They would have been on the front lines. They swear it up and down, but ask them when last they mindfully chose not to do a racist thing? Weird this world we live in: there are no bad guys, and yet there is much badness around and about us. 

By avoiding looking directly at the ugliness, by refusing to confront the ugliest parts of our past, folks are able to exculpate themselves from all responsibility - direct or tangential - for what obtains in this society. After all, they firmly believe we should all stop living in the past, they swear that love trumps hate and they don't see color. They never used the en word or so they'll tell you, but they sure do believe in Black on Black crime tho. 

I love the celebration of Black achievement. I love that we celebrate the ones who, despite everything, were creators, inventors, authors, thought-leaders, but what of the rest? We remember the Titans. We remember Corporal Brashear, who was so vilely tormented in his quest to be a a Navy diver, but what of the rest? What of Sandra and Philando? What of Terrence and Walter? What of the Charleston 9? What of Jordan and Trayvon? What of Tamir? And then what of Eric and Erica Garner? What of Khalief and Venida Browder? What of the parents of Tamir, Trayvon, Jordan, Richard, Aiyana..... The Titans were able to triumph, what about those who never got the chance? And what about their next of kin, who must now triumph in the names of their dead, like Mamie Till? I don't know, call me a glass half-empty-er, but that's where my mind goes every February. 

Someone suggested to me that the other eleven months of the year are for focusing on those stories. But is that really the case? It seems to me that the other eleven months are filled with POC shouting into the void about the challenges we face on a daily basis. All of which shouting is roundly ignored. 

This one month, I believe, is our opportunity to juxtapose, to critique, to present our data points in meaningful ways. Telling me who invented the traffic light is great (Garret P. Morgan) but I'd find contextualization of that success more informative. Tell me about the systems and structures that prevented him from bringing his other inventions to market as that offers me much more from which to draw insight and learning. It might also offer the same to the broader society, hell bent as it is to pretend that the truth is a lie. 

Black History Month frustrates, and sometimes infuriates, me because it is the month we celebrate the winning and take our eye off not just the ones who never even made it to the starting gates, but the ways in which even those who 'won' lost too. 

I think we need to figure out how to celebrate while at the same time offering the world ways to ameliorate their understanding of the journey of American Blackness. But that's just me. As you were.