Did you know that the first black certified public accountant in America was black?
Well, yes, you did know that. And if I were to go on the PA after the morning announcements and tell you that person’s name, date of birth, and when they first got their CPA license, I haven’t really educated you about anything. I mean, I suppose that I would have told you that it’s possible for at least one black person to become a CPA, but I would hope you already knew that. It’s not motivational, and it doesn’t convey the message that black people can leave their mark on history.
For comparison, if I told you that the inventor of the first gas mask and automatic traffic signal was black, and he personally used that gas mask to save a bunch of lives, now I have told you something. Inventing those things, and rescuing those people, would have been great whoever did them, but those great things were done by a black man.
And yet, most Black History Month presentations and posters and the like end up being like the former, rather than the latter. I mean, I understand why it happens: It’s easier to do it that way. All you have to do is Google “Who was the first black _____”, and come up with 20 different ways to fill in that blank, and then read a few basic details. But the end result ends up being a farce, that doesn’t accomplish any of the actual purpose of recognizing black history.
I think you’re underestimating the amount of personal courage it would take to be the first person to enter into space that had previously barred people like you from entering, often violently. Beyond that, I think these sorts of messages are useful not just for highlighting noteworthy individuals, but for reminding us that this sort of segregation was both pervasive, and still pretty recent. For example, John Wesley Cromwell Jr, the first Black CPA, got his license in 1921, after being denied for over fifteen years due to unfair “experience” requirements - it was perfectly legal for a Black man to get the license, but he had to have had a certain amount of time spent working in a CPA firm first, and of course, CPA firms wouldn’t hire Blacks, because it would “make the customers uncomfortable.” Kind of a neat example of how a policy can be racist without having any specific mention of race, and without anyone responsible for the policy having to personally hold any explicitly racist beliefs.
Also, when I Googled “First Black CPA,” pretty much all the results were from professional organizations for CPAs, some of them specifically for Black CPAs. Which strikes me as quite a bit different than your image of someone plugging different careers into a Google search and writing up ad copy based on the results.
I’ll confess that “first black CPA” wasn’t meant to be a real example; it’s just the most boring occupation I could think of.
And yes, the first <oppressed demographic> <occupation> needed courage, drive, and other admirable qualities to overcome that oppression. But the end result of that courage and drive is… that they end up in the same place as people from the majority without that courage and drive. That’s not really inspirational in the same way as people who genuinely shaped history, like Garret Morgan. Whom I only know about from Cleveland history, not Black History Month. And I’m sure there are plenty of other black people in history with similar accomplishments, except I’ve never heard of them, because they’re harder to find than just Googling “Who was the first black _____”. Which is exactly why we SHOULD be featuring them in Black History Month.
ISTM all of the examples in the OP amount to inspirational anecdotes.
Maybe being a CPA is not as exciting as saving people but it is doing something, having a career and so on. More, I would say the CPA has a better chance at finding a partner and starting a family and raising them in a good environment than the inventor of the traffic signal (unless that inventor got rich from it…did that happen)?
Random inventions are hard to come-by today. There are not a lot of things someone can build in their garage that will change the world any more. Sometimes just being Joe-Schmo who has a good job and is seen as achievable by kids is not a bad thing. Kids need hope that a good life is possible. CPA is more possible for them than < insert gizmo > inventor. (Which is not to say they should not dream of being an < insert gizmo > inventor.)
I would also add that I am not sure inspiring kids to reach for rare chances at success is the best idea.
So many inner-city kids seem to pin their hopes on being a music star or a famous athlete. Those things are great, we want those people in our society. But the vast majority of kids will never get close to that. There are about 500 NBA players (not even famous…just played at least one game).
There are about 670,000 CPAs.
I’m not saying we discourage kids from invention and sports and music. I am saying more will find success as a CPA. A LOT more.
The Great Man model of history is absolute shit, and teaching Black history by only emphasizing the George Washington Carvers is buying into that absolutely shit model.
Not only should they teach about the first Black CPA, they should teach about all the other Black CPAs. Because part of the point of Black History Month is that the entire history of Blacks in America be known.
And if you don’t teach about the first Black CPA, you might leave a whole class thinking that stuff like Black accountants arose sometime in the 1860s at worst, not 19-motherfucking-21. That’s a valuable data point in showing how racism persisted - and persists to this day.
Performers and athletes are very bimodal: The absolute best of the best make huge money, but the vast majority make nothing at all. An athlete who makes a decent middle-class living isn’t really a thing. So we try to discourage those as planned career paths. But not all fields are like that. A kid who aspires to become a great inventor, but doesn’t quite make it, might still be a quite competent engineer. A kid who aspires to be a tycoon might still be a small-business owner. A kid who aspires to be a strategic-genius general might still end up as a competent officer, and so on.
Perhaps. But surely, the worst option of all is to teach the Great Man model for white history, but the everyman version for black history. The message that sends is that a great white person can become a George Washington, who founded our country, or a James Watt, who started the industrial revolution, or an Albert Einstein, who… well, he did SOMETHING that the history teacher and the guidance counselor don’t entirely understand, but it was really, really smart; while a great black person can become John Wesley Cromwell Jr., who helped people do their taxes.
I think maybe it should not be Black History Month, but more of say Black Society Month. Not the right name, but the closest I could come up with right now.
Of course it should include inspiring historical black people and events. But also the whole timeline up till now. Because even now, the effects of the history of black people in America, has blacks today having a harder time of it. Celebrate very current black people who have done well for themselves and others, just last year.
Of course it is not as hard these days. But a very large number of black people are still mired in the ongoing effects of the past. These effects should also be highlighted especially in Black…Month. Person X became/did this in 2012, despite born and raised in a poor neighborhood, with lousy schools, little money or other support.
That sort of thing.
Keep it current in our minds that things got better, but still have a long way to go.
I also consider folks of any race in this concept. Caste/class/poverty, are things that require extra effort oneself and from without to break free of. But the black person in America has a particular worse starting point.
I’m not saying leave out George Washington Carver. Black History Month can be the chance to do more than that. So be even better than crappy Great Man White History. And explicitly say that’s what you’re doing to the kids, that you’re going to tell them about “great” Black men, inventors as great as Edison and politicians as great as Lincoln, but also about the ordinary people.
My biggest objections to how Black History is taught are 1) students are given the impression that black people silently accepted oppression until Brown and Rosa Parks and 2) its treated as something that’s put there for Black students,
like a bonus level . Black history is important To all of us. I, a white person, live in a better America because of the work and sacrifice of the Civil Rights movement. The first black CPA made my life better because i live in a slightly less bigoted place. They were part of a process we should all celebrate as good for everyone.
I could certainly get behind this. In addition to what you said, it would open up opportunities for guest speakers, real people in the community who’ve started up businesses, or produced acclaimed art, or otherwise been successful: People who wouldn’t get into the history books at all, not even as “the first black _____”, but who nonetheless would make good role models. And yes, I know that’s even further from the “Great Man” model, but a real, live person coming to the school has an impact in a way that a poster on the wall or an announcement over the PA can’t.
Who is going to find those people though? Coordinate a time? Set up the visit (you have to have coffee and snacks, at the very least).
I mean it sounds great, but the reason Black History month is like it is now is that it’s not funded, and teachers in a school already have 1000 things they have to do because they will get in trouble if they don’t and another 1000 things to do because the literal well-being of a child demands it. Its not like schools are full of lazy, capable personel with time on their hands who have just opted out of takibg care 9f these things.
But someone from the school still has to be liason, and set it up within the school.
Its not a huge task . . .maybe 5 hours? But adding 5 hours to someone’s plate isn’t nothing, not when you aren’t taking anything away. On my campus, we have so many things we’d do, if someone had another 5 hours.
My school used to have a principal, two counselors, an assistant principal, an office manager and two clerks. Fifteen years later, we are bigger, but have a principal, a counselor, and office manger, and one clerk. And fewer teachers. Not sure how many fewer, but several. So even something like “call around to professional organizations, have a meeting about what we need, coordinate a time, have a follow up meeting, secure a space, set up refreshments/thank you gifts” isn’t nothing. People are already overworked to the breakibg point.
Maybe not all schools are like this. But I think its pretty common.
More often, the office manager, who makes 60% of what a teacher makes.
One shitty thing about education is that teachers put a lot of energy into the issue of tracher pay but paraprofessional pay is even worse. Its appallingly bad.
All comes down to how much you(pl) prioritize the idea of Black History Month over other things, I suppose. 5 hours is not nothing, you’re right. And “not nothing” is the least that should be done for BHM.
The idea of a teacher or staff member having to pay for parts of something like that out of their own pocket is repellent to me, though.
At my kids’ school, if there was something like that, the PTA would fund it. Or just not have the snacks and gifts. You do not “have to have” them.
Oh, I agree it’s a matter of priorities, but i think it needs to be understood as institutional priorities, not individual ones. We are not given adequate staffing to cover even the things we have to do to keep the school physically open. When the decision was made to strip staffing down to the bare bones legal minimum, that was an institutional decision not to have things like guest speakers and field trips and lots of other things we used to do.
Plus, it also highlight how petty some of this racism was. “Oh my god, that guy adding up columns of numbers is Black! However shall I recover from this shock!”