Last month was Black History Month, and now that it is March, I continue reflecting on the meaning of this important time of the year. People have sometimes considered my preoccupation with racial justice and history as an anomaly in a white lady – because it kind of is. Like so many histories of people of color, white folks are seen as entirely absent from the larger contextual scene. We are considered entirely ignorant of African American history in the United States, and of the generalized African diaspora.
But I have wondered again and again how it’s possible for us to construct Black History Month in honor of the African diaspora without noting white people’s intimate history in the forcible movement of African peoples to the Americas and their subsequent enslavement. When we notate February as Black History Month, something very important happens. We privilege Black history – for a month – over “history.” Which, if we understand racist code, means white people’s history.
So while this privileging on the one hand feels like a much needed nod to a people’s history, it also feels like an attempt to separate white people’s history from the history of slavery, forcible removal of peoples from their homes, massive sexual violence, and other traceable atrocities that belong—at least in this half of the Americas—to white people.
Our central question is: How do we locate ourselves in a painful history while honoring the singular and collective voices of African American history, and voices from our other histories? What do we already know about our racialized inheritance? What do we not know about it? Where do we see the outcomes of our history of slavery – in property and wealth accrual, access to education, healthcare, and policies that determine who gets to become an American citizen?
When we try to find ourselves in an interracial history and in Black History Month, I hope that we are both collectively aware of our individual place at this moment in time and understanding of the where, when, and who of our ancestors. Trauma has an enormous impact on our communities. As we work to bring people of color and white folks together, we have to reconsider and reorganize our place in history that stands in full recognition of what we have done and survived as a nation. It’s my hope that we do this in an effort to make Black history not just a month, but a legacy.
Filed under: BABES Network, Community Mental Health, Health Care Access, Healthy Birth Outcomes, Women's Health Outreach Tagged: 2014, Advocacy, African Diaspora, Black History Month, Community, Education, February, History, Privilege, Racism, White Privilege
