Black History Month is DISCRIMINATORY and RACIST!!

Great Debates
21

Twentyeight, you read a few things about BHM. You even saw a few things on TV about BHM. Whoopdie.

Did you grow up learning about prominent figures in black history? Doubt it. In Small White Town, U.S.A., where I grew up with many a racist farmer, you know how many black historical figures I learned about? Zero. That’s why BHM is interesting to me. I like learning about black culture, which has been denigrated to a lower class of distinction throughout our nation’s history. Heck, we weren’t even told in school that our forefathers had slaves. That would, somehow, be offensive.

If the media is making a big deal out of BHM, it’s because it gives them a legitimate opportunity. If you don’t want to learn about black history, I would suggest you do like the three monkeys, with your eyes, ears and mouth covered. You should at least be happy that they gave blacks the shortest month of the year, right?

One more thing:

Absolutely priceless, Satan. :smiley:

22

Why is it that BHM is celebrated in February, the SHORTEST month of the year?!?

I tell ya, the man is everywhere…

:smiley:

23

There are quite a few other people fighting for a national white history month. You can find them quite easily by typing in “white history month” in google. I’d link em, but I have no intention of linking to Klan or Nazi sites.

Here in California we do have a White History month, it’s september or october IIRC. It was pushed for and passed by the European American Issues Forum a lovely little hate group here in San Francisco that has managed to cloak themselves in a thin veneer of repectability.

So really you have no point in this post, and there’s no real debate here. Maybe you just want to spew racist bullshit.(and I’m sure you’re a real nice guy and wouldn’t want to do that, would you?)

24

It’s white men trying to make up for having shorter, um, never mind.

25

Nice post, Marc.

Twentyeight:

Haven’t they gone into the streets, screaming discrimination? If not as visibly as black people, could that be because, well, a good portion of the Native American population was wiped out during the European colonization of America and subsequent westward expansion, and most of the rest shunted off into reservations? Hmm? Are you honestly saying that we don’t take Native Americans seriously because they don’t have enough professional athletes?

26

. . . except it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Fighting ignorance knows no bounds.

  1. If that’s all you think blacks have done, you need a couple years composed of nothing but Black History Months.
  2. Oh, and you’re obviously ignorant of the civil rights battles of Native Americans.

Careful, son–this can be used as evidence that the justice system is biased against blacks.

Beats me. I rarely read them. There’s a Hispanic one, though.

Well, there was Margaret Cho, but she was fired because she wasn’t Asian enough. They literally made her appear on the air eating with chopsticks, then she was to stick those same chopsticks in her hair. Because she’s Asian! Get it?! (Oh, that and the small matter of her weight–they wanted her to lose several pounds in a matter of days, and when she tried, she experienced massive kidney failure.)

Someone is painfully ignorant of the racial tension between Koreans and blacks in the cities.

“Yellow”? Do we still say that? Anyway, our current Miss America, Angela Perez Baraquio, sure looks part Asian to me. She was Miss Hawaii. From the name, she may be part Hispanic as well.

Oh, please. Miss America started up in 1921. Blacks weren’t even permitted to compete until 1970. 71 women have worn the Miss America crown. You know how many have been nonwhite? Five. Five out of 71. And the first nonwhite winner didn’t occur until 1984, 63 years after the pageant started and 14 years after blacks were allowed in. For all intents and purposes, it is the White Miss America pageant.

And the Hispanics have the Hispanic Grammy Awards.

Yes, those poor, downtrodden whites just can’t get a leg up in the publishing or fashion worlds. :rolleyes:

Does the word “Nisei” ring any bells?

27

Your current Miss America 2001, Angela Perez Baraquio, is Filipino and the first Asian-American Miss America. http://www.missamerica.org/

she’s from Hawai’i and did hula during the talent competition.

28

28 said:

Hmmm.

Imagine how black people feel…

29

Of course it is discrimination, but discrimination isn’t always a bad thing. People have it in their heads that discrimination is always a bad thing when in fact people discriminate each day without thinking twice about it.

Example:
Two people are in a hurry and run into each other. One is closer, and you help that one first. That is discrimination. You discriminated against the person that was farther away.

Sexual discrimination, or sexism, isn’t always bad either. Public bathrooms are often discriminatory, as are women’s locker rooms.

Racial discrimination, or racism, almost always is thought of as bad, but it isn’t always. Black History Month is a way to educate people about (unfortunately) little known facts. I don’t see how that is bad. They don’t force it down anyone’s mouth. No one is forced to do anything.

30

Eh, PL, it’s not under “Black History Month”, it’s under “Race Relations in the US”.]

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=59034

To address the OP: Regarding Black History Month, I think that it’s a wonderful idea for people to “stop and think about it”. All over the United States, fifth-graders like La Principessa were doing reports on various black leaders, and I thought it was really great to watch my kid sit down and read a book on Rosa Parks and do a big poster with 10 facts and cardboard busses all over it. Dunno how much she “learned”, but she at least knows who Rosa Parks is, now.

And when Bonzo was in the fifth grade, he learned all about Thurgood Marshall. Isn’t that what school is for–learning about stuff that’s important but that, left to your own devices, you’d almost certainly never bother to find out about? And schools probably wouldn’t be addressing this, except in their former rather peripheral way, if it weren’t for Black History Month. When I was in grade school, way back in the Pleistocene Era (the 1960s), we learned about The Famous Black Person, singular. It was George Washington Carver, who invented the peanut (or something like that :smiley: ). Nobody mentioned Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, Jr., or Selma, or anything like that, even though it was going on all around us. History in the making, and there we were with nothing but the photo of a serious-looking GWC holding up a beaker of peanut oil to the camera.

I think it’s a vast improvement, today. And I think it would be great to have Nisei History Month (or whatever they want to call it), and Native American History Month, and Latin-American History Month, and etc. etc.

31

What is this? Anytime someone expresses a negative opinion about a race, they’re automatically racist?

Cool, but it’s not nationwide, like BLM. pldennison, the same with your listings, only they’re not shoved in our faces all month long, nor little factoids given on kids TV, nor mentioned in comic strips in the paper several times a week, nor discussed in almost daily articles in the news.

Why is only one racial history month so widely hammered on through all media? You’re lucky if those other historical ‘months’ you mentioned even get a casual comment in the news when they arrive.

OK, but all year long, through various forms of educational TV, one learns about figures of importance from all races. When I was in school, granted it was at the beginning of the civil rights movement, our history books dealt with world history. We learned of the prime movers and shakers of all races. Granted, then there was a lack of black figures both because of residual racism and because studies concerning Africa were focused mainly through British exploration and colonies or world wars or the Dutch settlements (Afrikaans).

Get into American history of the time and figures of all races in America were mentioned. Today, I expect the history books to deal more fairly with black history, concerning important figures in Africa, within the same proportions as anyone else. Like, if you have a chapter dealing with Asian American figures, then you have a chapter dealing with African Americans. Not just little paragraphs of Asian Americans, followed by chapters of Black Americans.

George Washington Carver was the first famous black person I learned about, and now I know about many, many more. Yet, in the past, I learned about a lot of white people running the underground railroad but now, all I hear about is black people running the same thing.

It’s like things have gotten lopsided. The focus is on black people, virtually forgetting about the other races. The news media does not just choose to promote anything, because time is money. The news media promoting black anything above all other races is because of being pressured into it by politics and cries of discrimination.

Several kid programs deal equally with important facts of all races, but come Black History Month, they deal mainly with black figures – of course, but then, afterwards, there are no historical racial months ‘pushed’ for any of the other races, including white. There is no white history month – and that crap of ‘well, all other months are white history’ doesn’t cut it,’ nor any other racial history month so widely promoted across the States.

Have your racial history months. I don’t care, but don’t just over promote one above the others. Give all equal press and time.

32

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Twentyeight *
**

I’ll get right on it 28. I’ll call my people and they’ll call your people. We’ll get the Native American PR guy in on it. Do you have the Jewish media consultant number?
So tell me when you’ve reach your quota for each race, 28. We’ll keep it to a schedule that you feel comfortable with.

33

There’s a good reason for that. “White” generally refers to people of European ancestry, an area which features many different and distinct cultures. Most white people, including myself, know which nation(s) their ancestors came from, and, when celebrating their heritage, celebrate being Irish, or German, or Portuguese, or whatever, not being white. However, while Africa is also full of many different and distinct cultures, many African-Americans cannot trace their heritage back to any specific culture, because, unfortunately, no one kept track of who came from where when their ancestors were brought over here as slaves. Without a specific national identity, African-Americans had to “settle” (not really the best word choice, but I hope my meaning is clear) for celebrating their African heritage.
“White pride” is just a shield for white supremacists to proclaim their racism in the name of heritage, and a “White History Month” would be an extension of that. Perhaps a call for Italian History Month, Russian History Month, German History Month, French History Month, and so on, in combination with History Months for the other ethinicities, would be an acceptable and workable a way of teaching about all cultures. (Although obviously there would have to be combinations, as we just don’t have that many months.)

34

I was going to play devil’s advocate and point out how I learned more about George Washington Carver in grade school than any other American chemist, though there were certainly many with comparable and greater accomplishments. I punched ‘Famous American Chemists’ in a search engine to get some ideas for relatively unheard of white, Asian, and Hispanic ones. 3 of the first five were about African-American chemists.

Though I have nothing against Black History Month or attempting to promote knowledge of black history, we have to realize that black Americans haven’t had as many opportunities in this country to achieve truly great things, most were slaves for most of their history on this continent and they weren’t granted universal legal equality until a few decades ago. This means that when you are asked to provide a list of famous black Americans, you are going to have to include people who wouldn’t be considered particularly great on a more inclusive list. Though noble in purpose, this kind of bias does look a bit unfair, especially when people are claiming that kids are getting a biased education because they don’t know who Malcom X or George Washington Carver - how many non-black civil-rights leaders and 19th century chemists can they name? I’ve picked up a LOT more about the first casualty of the Revolutionary War than the first casualty of any other.

35

I watch more TV than your average human. In fact, I watch more TV than most humans could tolerate. And I haven’t seen even one of the PSA’s for BHM that has been so “widely hammered on through all media”.

Am I just watching the wrong channels?

36

I think the OP’s biggest problem is that he’s ignoring all the time during the year that doesn’t have a cutesy name.

White people create the largest percentage of the population in the United States (unless something big has changed in the past several months). It stands to reason, then, that (simply by playing the odds) one can predict that most of the stuff we’ll hear about will be “white stuff” ("… in the middle of an Oreo…" sorry, it’s been a long day).

So what’s so horrible about taking a little bit of time off to say, “Hey, there are some other people who have different levels of pigment in their skin than the average American.” Personally, I find learning about Frederick Douglass a bit more interesting than hearing the same things about Napolean Bonaparte and George Washington over and over (how many times can you hear jokes about height or wooden teeth?).

So if there’s no “White History Month”, that’s because we already have “White History All-The-Rest-Of-The-Time”. And pretty much “White [everything else]”, too. So get over it.

37

Well, my dear fellow, when the folks are making conclusions about groups of people based on their skin color, and when those folks feel that this is inherent, that’s the textbook definition of racism. Is it not?

So, blanket statements such as “blacks are criminals” are racist.

38

Yes, such statements are racist. But so also are statements such as “All (Insert label here) are good people”

I think that Twentyeight’s point may be that it isn’t a good situation when we find it necessary to establish a Black History Month. I know it is my opinion that that kind of thing promotes divisiveness, rather than unity.

I don’t have a better idea. But I think that the OP may have an opinion that actually deserves some thought, rather than knee jerk comparisons to Archie Bunker.

Maybe?

39

Yes…? If your point is that months or whatever celebrating more or less unknown X contributions shouldn’t themselves becomes a means of denigrating others, sure.

No, his point, in all its ignorance was he has had black folks overload. That much is clear.

No, I disagree. Content may or may not promote one or the other. Certainly I have problems with specific content, but the existance of the month is neutral vis-a-vis divisions.

Ahem, knee jerk? Reread the responses please. Reread the OP. (Then put in the context of his scanty but less-than-impressive posting record.) The OP is the one who presented a poorly thought out, fact-free knee-jerk response. And this being GD, he got fried for it and his less-than-convincing responses.

Now, if someone wants to critique specific things about Black History Month, debate factual distortions by idealogues, well I think no one will have a problem with that. However, that’s a long cry from this OP.

40

Case in point against the tone of your OP. The reality is that the Underground Railroad was, basically, a way for blacks to help blacks move from trhe slave-holding states to the North (and often to Canada). There were a few whites involved in those states, but the historical record shows that the real white involvement began after they crossed the Ohio River or the Mason-Dixon line.

Yet you remember being told about the whites “running” the organization. Why? Because the written records were easier to find when a slave-catcher took a white home-owner to court in Cleveland or Harrisburg or Oberlin and the earliest people producing the histories grabbed the easiest information to publish. (It didn’t hurt that portraying the Railroad as a white operation allowed white folks to think “Well, we weren’t all bad.”)

Now that sufficient historical evidence has been dug up and published to show that the Underground Railroad truly was a black phenomenon, rather than pay attention to the history, you claim that things are “getting lopsided.”

No. Things are getting straightened out.

You might want to look into who is paying for all those spots. I’m not talking about how they get air time, that is covered, to a certain extent, by the stations covering their required “public service” spots (although many of those spots are, indeed, paid ads). However, every one of those spots has to be written, produced (acted or drawn), narrated, etc. Could it be that, just possibly, the black community has come up with the funds to do something they feel is important? Once they have actually spent the money to produce those things, the media is quite happy to accept their donated work (relieving the broadcasters of the obligation to produce stuff, (usually warnings to wear seat belts and the like), themselves).

I’m sure that if you wanted to sponsor a series of historical tributes to various Asian immigrants, Native Americans, or South Sea Island immigrants, the stations would love to accept your donation.

It is not political pressure, but black people’s money that is keeping BLM in your vision.

Local TV news probably does a little bit extra covering BLM, but that is not “political pressure,” that is “playing for market share.” Blacks are a sizeable population in all but a very few large cities in this country. The odds are that most stations broadcast BLM information during the news as much as a publicity ploy as anything else.

I suspect that as the Hispanic populations of some areas begin to decide to flex their economic muscle, we will see more “catering” to them, as well. (It probably has already started, but I do not live in a heavily Hispanic region, so I can’t confirm that.)