Black history... "MONTH"?

The BBQ Pit
21

Where did you go to high school? You claim that students before your time were better educated in history because they weren’t wasting their time on PC stuff, but the description you give of what you read in high school history classes sounds way, way, way more advanced than anything we read in high school history classes. I graduated from a high school in Ohio in 1970. It was probably about average or a little below for quality. We never used anything nearly as difficult as The Rise of the Third Reich or Eyes on the Prize. We used somewhat old-fashioned textbooks and little else.

Where did you go to high school that you used books that were so advanced? I think you learned more in your high school history classes than most students of any generation.

22

This celebratory Black History Month is a new thing to me, being a furriner and all. I have to say, it makes me slightly uncomfortable. I find it hard to believe that it’s purpose is just to educate people about the contribution of black Americans to the history of this country, if that were the case, wouldn’t it be difficult to find enough months in the year to overcome people’s ignorance in general? (This is of course true for any people of any nation). This leaves me with the feeling that the purpose of this month to is to attempt to increase the perceived impact of black Americans on US history in a revisionist sense. I may be wrong, but this is how it seems to me. It seems unnecessary, I liked the idea of an American history month, no us and them, no men and women, no black and white, but Americans, where important historical events, irrespective of the colour of the participants, are reflected upon.

23

Yeah, American History month would be swell, but I don’t see it happening, so there’s that. While I find the idea of Black History month a little unsettling for the same reasons mentioned above, I also have to admit that this is the first time this month I’ve so much as semi-thought about Black History. Usually, come 02/01, there’s a flood of little quasi-educational snippets on Tv about Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas which seems to be missing this year. Good for it. Truth of the matter is that if I actually cared about black history as a single facet of world history, I’d go look it up. Any other person, black or white, can do the same. As for myself, I’d rather focus on the whole instead of one contrived part.

“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”

24

Hi Wendell:
I went to T.S.Wootton High School, Rockville, Montgomery County, Maryland. It’s a public high school, but has consistently earned awards for excellence in education. My history teachers, especially, were some of the most intelligent, interesting, educated people I’ve ever met. The one in particular who used Eyes on the Prize and Rise & Fall had been an activist/radio broadcaster/political commentator in the 60’s & 70’s. The classes I took were all honors and advanced placement, but curriculum is curriculum. We may have read more advanced textbooks, but everybody was being taught the same facts.

You know, how is having flags in red/green/black hanging in a school cafeteria for a month benefiting African Americans or anyone else? What is the objective of putting up pictures of successful Black Americans in the library for a month? Let’s integrate already!! From my experiences, history classes do include facts, examples, and in depth analysis of minority issues. That should be our objective, not celebrating one group specially for one month. Let’s worry about making all schools use a well-rounded curriculum and not so much about what’s basically a glorified pep rally without any substance. It just seems like a waste of time and an avoidance of the real issue.

What also annoys me is, like I said before, we go overboard with teaching stuff ONLY because it’s PC. For example, a local college where I live, in celebration of Black History Month, has put together a presentation on the history and culture of hip-hop music. They are going on the road with this to the local high schools and teaching the kids about hip-hop in a special presentation. Is this something that a student should be dedicating several hours in one day to? Would it be acceptable to take time out of a kids day to have a presentation on the history of sit-coms? And I have a sneaking suspicion that if half a day was dedicated to a presentation on classical music that fingers would be pointed at the white-male dominated curriculum. (By the way, I think a half day dedicated to classical music would be a waste of time, too…music should be discussed in depth in music class)

Anyway, that’s my rant. Flame away.

25

Like a lot of people who grew up in the D.C. area, I don’t think you realize how much more educated (and, to a lesser degreee, richer) you and your classmates are than the average American. I’m astonished every time someone talks about Prince George’s County as if it were poor just because it’s majority black. Come on, it’s the 66th richest county in the U.S.

In any case, I think you had a much better education than I did in the '60’s in a no better than average high school.

26

I may have had a better education than people not living in the D.C. area. Not sure about that.

Regardless, I don’t think anyone can make an argument about how schools are not including minorities in the curriculum and base it on their school experiences in the 60’s (not that you were…just an example…hmmm, that wasn’t a very pit-like aside, was it?). I think in order to argue either way, it’s more useful to look at current curriculum.

My education is besides the point. I’m using it as an example that minorities are included in one school’s recent curriculum. If this example can be accurately extrapolated to mean that many/most schools are teaching integrated information, fine, great, no need for a special month set aside. If this example is not a true representation of how the rest of the country is going, then we should work at getting other schools to this point and getting them to teach integrated history classes. Either way, what is the tangible benefit of Black History Month?

27

I have to make a retraction…the hip-hop presentation was not taken to actual high schools. It was merely presented at the college campus and high schoolers were invited to come and participate. I misunderstood the story when I read it the first time.

I stand by my argument, though, that kids are sometimes taught stuff only because it’s PC, and not because it has any other redeeming value.

28

Without denying that, it doesn’t mean all the PG County schools are good. I went to Largo High in the 80s and it was almost enough to put me off public schools for life. We had very few decent electives; I signed up for a journalism class in my junior year and it was cancelled before the school year started. I ended up being a Teacher’s Aide instead because there simply wasn’t any appealing alternative. The teacher I was an aide for pulled some strings to get me allowed to take my senior year requirements in night and summer courses because she didn’t want to put me through another full year at this crappy school.

I guess they made it a magnet school not long after I fled screaming from the place, but the people who attended Largo before that definitely were NOT among the "more educated than the average American.”

Sorry for the hijack but there definitely are parts of PG County that fit the stereotype, Wendell.

29

lunatic digression:

…
Hey, the Irish have freakin’ St. Paddy’s Day–ridiculous how big that is. I’m of part German (Pennsylvania Dutch) descent, but there’s no recognition of that ethnicity–even though a lot of people in my part of the country are of German extraction, it makes no explicit mark on the general culture. (We just assimilated more fully; “Oh, no, we’re WASPs, really :D”) But Ireland, <font color="#006010">miserable moldy spit of land that it is,</font> is romanticised beyond belief. Of course, after the Americans took England’s side in both World Wars, Germany’s been quite demonized, thanks.
Oh well, whatever! My ancestors were English, German, and Scots, if I go back 350 years. But a hundred years ago, they were all Americans. I’m an American, myself. If I went back 2000 years, well, those nations didn’t even exist yet; it’s all flux; the blacks think they’re different 'cos they have that dark skin. hmph!

30

<font color="#901000">Making February </font>“Black History Month” <font color="#901000">seems to imply </font><font color="#7E7700">that all important events in “</font>Black History<font color=”#7E7700">" took place in that month</font>–<font color="#008012">which seems unlikely. Racism? you make the call!</font>

A new world order has been formed/between the cheque book and the dawn/A new renaissance man is born"
Jim Moginie/Peter Garrett/Martin Rotsey(Midnight Oil), “Renaissance Man”

31

If your high school offered a journalism class it was already above average. Most high schools don’t offer journalism.

I’m always surprised when I look at what courses the magnet schools offer here in P.G. County. It’s vastly better than what you could get at my high school (and my high school wasn’t the bottom of the barrel by a long shot). I’m still annoyed by Montgomery or Howard County people who look down on P.G. County because it’s not quite as rich as they are.

32

I apologize for hijacking the thread. Still, I wonder if average high schools really spend much time on Black History Month. Do we have on this board any current or fairly recent high school students who went to a fairly average (or even below average) high school? How much time did your school spend on Black History Month?

Be honest about the academic level of your high school. I’m really tired of people from upper-middle-class families who insist that they came from average backgrounds.

33

So for 20 days out of the school year, the schools focus on African-American issues for an hour a day. 20 hours out of what, 1000? Big damn deal.

34

The point is, Otto, what does it accomplish? Why can’t we focus more energy on making sure all groups are included in the regular curriculum? It doesn’t offend me that Black History Month exists, any more than it offends me that they serve green beer at my local pub on 3/17. I just think it’s about as pointless as kids giving each other Backstreet Boys valentines on 2/14 in school sponsored exchanges. I taught high school and believe me, there is little enough time as it is. We should make it as productive as possible.

For all those bitter and left-out Germans out there…what the hell do you call Oktoberfest? It’s we people who are descended from Yugoslavians who really have something to complain about.

35

Black History month actually started as a valid reponse to a real problem. Unfortunately, most of its potential to make a difference has been squandered in poorly thought out little “presentations” that do not convey to the general public just what the black experience in the U.S. has been. This results in the kind of reaction that foolsguinea posted, above.

The purpose of Black History Month was not supposed to be a general “let’s all get a warm fuzzy feeling about the blacks in our midst.” It originally addressed the very real problem that historians had totally ignored the black experience in the U.S. except as it was mentioned in the context of whites doing things to blacks. Later, it was expanded to include the idea of communicating the history that had finally been documented to the society at large.

Look around this MB. There are threads every week or two with statements to the effect that the poster shouldn’t be held accountable for something done to blacks that ended 135 years ago. There are statements like the one KM2 made that blacks have done so little that they have to make a big deal about celebrating a man who played around with peanuts.

The response to those sorts of statements should be to provide people with the actual history showing how blacks were held in political and financial bondage long after the 13th Amendment was ratified (ending politically fewer than 30 years ago in many places and continuing financially in some places today) and how the effects of both the earlier physical and later political/financial slaveries have shaped the culture of the black community in the U.S. (It should also include the internal debates and the mistakes, perceived or real, that have been made by the black community and leadership. Today, however, any honest attempt to discuss those issues would be immediately interrupted by those who chose to see the world in “black and white” as a reason to shrug off any responsibility that they have to work toward a truly egalitarian, race-blind society.)

As long as people like Captain Ed can espouse suppression as an appropriate response to “uppity colored” in order to “protect our white women” (when few lynchings were for purported assaults–and most of those accusations were invented for the event) and as long as KM2 can wander around in his white cocoon, oblivious to the fact that Carter’s peanut experiments revitalized the economy of Southern agriculture, there is a need for a genuine focus on black history.

No Irish or Hungarian or Spaniard immigrant (or their descendant) is denied a job or a place to live in this country because of skin color. And we should be aware of all people’s contributions. However, as long as people are going to justify their own dismissal of blacks on the grounds that “they have everything handed to them” or “they have never earned anything, themselves” then we need a direct effort to dispell those notions.

Should we keep Black History Month?
I don’t know.
In its current manifestation, it seems to be led by clueless people hanging tri-color flags and making vague statements about small numbers of black leaders with no context to the efforts those leader expended to make the U.S. a better place.

We need a way to acomplish the goal of Black History Month; I don’t know the best way to do this. Total incorporation in U.S. History in high school would be a good place to start, but I doubt that the actual courses of the vast majority of high schools come any where near the quality of the few good courses mentioned earlier in this thread.

A brief overview of the origins of Black History Month can be found here:
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmintro2.html

Tom~

36

Well, I am a current high school student (I go to a school that is for the most part upper middle class), and we spent no special extra time on black history this month. Just glancing through my World History and American History books, we seem to deal with many of the issues (such as Japanese internment in WWII), but only to the degree that they’re important and affect history…Japanese internment was a small part of WWII, that, however bad it was, affected only a small amount of people, therefore it’s not overly emphasized. Perhaps it’s for a similar reason that black history is supposedly taught less. There are less black people in the world than “white” people (white people being basically anyone not black, ie, asians etc.), therefore, it is obvious that pretty much no matter what, their impact on history is bound to be smaller…it seems to me that it would be far more logical to just accept peoples’ contributions for what they are, and not draw attention to their race :). Heck, isn’t that being racist :wink:

A Freudian slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother.

37

What I meant with my last line there, “Isn’t that being racist?” was that having a special month just to honor a certain race might be kind of racist. :slight_smile:

38

How I define racism…

Anytime you see the word black (as in black history month) or hispanic (as in hispanic community), or any other race used as an adjective just plug in the words “white male”, (as in white male history month) and ask yourself if anybody would me pissed off about it. If the answer is yes, it’s racist. Any government supported celebration of any race or ethnic origin or sex is just plain wrong.
When you celebrate one race, you reduce every other race you’re not celebrating.

“Hope is not a method”

39

I also went to a very good high school (I still am in high school, but in a different and crappier one…more on this coming soon in the Pit…), in the third richest county in the nation (Hunterdon Cty, NJ…I’m pretty sure it’s still #3). So, by no means do I claim to have just an average education (although I’m sure that some of you would claim that about me). But I must say that the history I learned, even in the required freshmen and sophmore courses, was very impartial and broad-based. Hell, we were even required to take a course junior year called “Comparitive World Studies,” which was dedicated to studying other cultures around the world and comparing them to us. And I don’t see what money, or even the “quality” of the school has to do with this. It costs the same amount of money to teach about George Washington Carver as it does to teach about George Washington. State governments have to step in here and change the curriculum if there’s a problem (and I don’t deny that there is a problem in some history curriculums, just not ALL of them).

Oh, I know. I go to a public high school, so it’s not the same, but in my math class some of us are trying to move on to improper integrals, while others are still hung up on trigonometric substitutions. z=tan(x/2)!! Come on!

That’s the kind of stuff that we have to fix. However, I’m not sure that Specialty History Months are the way to go about it.

That’s one thing that we never learned about either (yes, I’m of Irish descent). The struggles of Irish immigrants trying to get jobs in northern cities are highly marginalized, especially as more emphasis is put on black history. The only time that Irish immigrants are mentioned, they are painted as racists who hated freemen and tried to prevent them from getting jobs. The only other thing mentioned in my history courses that could even be considered relevant to that topic was when we talked about women in sweatshops during the “feminism” unit.

I can’t imagine why.
tomndebb:

But is “Black History Month” the right sort of focus?

Don’t get me started on affirmative action.

Here’s the essential question: What parts of history should be taught in the “core” or mandatory courses, and what parts should be taught in electives? If you try to sum up American history in nine weeks, you’ll find that the accomplishments of black men and women (with the notable exceptions of Dr. King and Rosa Parks) tend to be left off, not out of prejudice, but out of sheer relevancy. Slavery is taught even in elementary school, and no high school or even junior high that I’m aware of supresses the civil rights movement. What else should be taught in an overview of American history?

“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” -Winston Churchill

40

How?

I have never felt slighted because the newspapers play up Chinese New Year. I am not put down when there are stories on Judaism during the High Holy Days. I do not feel exalted over any one else, in some fashion, when there are stories recounting the exploits of the Irish or the Germans (or the U.S. nation). How does one celebration denigrate anyone else?

As to the statement about inserting “white male” into any phrase–it is not needed. Any story you pick up that does not indicate black/hispanic/female/Asian/whoever is celebrating “white males.” We have such a dominance in this culture that it is assumed that we are the subject unless it is specifically stated otherwise.

Tom~