Because African-American contributions to world history was so often trivialized and omitted in much of American public school curriculums – keep in mind this occurred well into the 1980s before systematic change affected school curriculums nationwide – Negro History Week didn’t just imply black people were left out of history, it reflected the reality of the sociological bigotry that made blacks, Mexicans, Jews, Chinese and others historical nonentities. If anything it taught us that history is HIS-story – or HER-story, or whatever handy ethnocentric filter you wish to view it through. If your culture was the elite in charge of education, you could approve whatever textbooks and dogma that kept your people in a positive light while reducing other points of view to limited paragraphs. Any discussion of “black” history that doesn’t begin with an examination of the racial biases that necessitated scholars like JA Rodgers, Carter G. Woodson to separately catalogue, record and disseminate black success stories is a flawed one. This is often where the “success story” meme began, and its a reflection of how very little has changed in that discipline for nearly 90 years.
That said, as an Afrocentrist, while I disagree with your first objection I agree with your second. But it isn’t so much that these capsuled histories of black success stories are patronizing (black scholars designed the often-repeated tales) so much as they are sometimes fraught with historical errors, half-truths, myths, misconceptions taught as truths and outright lies. Shit’s embarassing as if they still told the George Washington cherry tree story. There is desparately needed an intellectual rigor and new standard of truth and accuracy that must be applied to Afrocentric histories. I agree there ought to be more teaching of the macro trends that link and highlight the achievements of individuals.
There is still real a need for Black History Month. There is a real need for all sorts of ethnic/regional studies: Native American, Southern, Western Frontier, New England, etc.
I’d describe most superfluous ethnic descriptors as being redundant before accussing them of being patronizing. You can easily prove the first; you often have to presume the latter.
Yeeeeeeeah, but: there are sometimes key ethnic preferences to how the food is prepared, seasoned and presented that makes you know whether it was, say, black barbeque (which tends to be sweeter, spicier and molasses-like in consistency) and white barbeque (which is often pulled pork and typically boiled before its 'queued.)
If you were doing a study on Scottish people then it wouldn’t be condescending. If you were doing a study on whatever ethnicity that I was then it wouldn’t be condescending. In the context of Black History Month it isn’t condescending to bring up people like Booker T. Washington, G.W. Carver, or the Tuskegee Airman.
I think this is just something we’re not going to be able to arrive at an agreement.
You’re probably right. Condescension is in the eye of the beholder. If you ask someone like Tiger Woods if he wants to be known as a great AE golfer he’ll probably tell you no. If you ask the Reverend Jackson if he want’s the historic moniker of great AE civil rights activist I would anticipate a yes.
We’re not in disagreement over dissemination of information. But apartheid-style history is a distortion of the nature of the study. I’ll go out on a limb and speculate that Black History Month was established as a vehicle by which black children could identify with history on a personal level. This should be incorporated into American history and not remanded to the “history of the month”. There was a time when this was applicable but that time has passed.
Well, sure, but the fact remains that there are many many more people who will study Carver as an AA rather than simply as a part of a survey of inventors. There’s no corresponding period of time when Scottish contributions to modern society are touted. The two cannot be compared because they are presented differently.