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| Isolating "Black History" from everybody's history is bad teaching |
| 2009-02-24 |
| As a teacher, I agree with her point. So many of these designated days and months to commemorate something get shoved into the schedule according to the calendar, rather than the natural flow of the topic. When we home schooled, we read Benjamin Banneker's biography in our study of early America; we read Frederic Douglass during his part in history, and read African American literature in proper chronological sequence with the rest of American Literature, for example. Same with Women's History; and we were able to devote a full school year to Pre-Columbian and Modern Western Hemisphere other than the US. Some 80 years later, Woodson's Negro History Week -- now Black History Month -- has come to seem quaint, jarring, anachronistic. The country has undergone such seismic cultural shifts in the intervening eight decades that it is sometimes difficult to recognize the landscape into which Woodson was born. Suffice it to say that the nation of Tiger Woods, Oprah and Barack Obama no longer needs a Black History Month. It's not merely that a short month set aside to commemorate black achievement is a curious and old-fashioned appendage, like rabbit ears on a TV or a rotary dial on a telephone. It's worse than that: The commemoration is a damaging form of apartheid, setting the contributions of black Americans aside as separate and unequal. It sends the wrong signal to all Americans, black, white and brown. The history of America's black citizens cannot be segregated from the nation's history because black people have been here from the very beginning. The nation's past is one huge tapestry woven from the threads of many peoples, many cultures, many lives. From Crispus Attucks to buffalo soldiers to Tuskegee airmen to Ralph Bunche to Condoleezza Rice, the story of black Americans is America's story. |
| Posted by:mom |
| #3 At my employer, they are really hitting Black History month. The cafeteria is plastered with posters commemorating famous African Americans - George Washington Carver, Thurgood Marshall, etc. Conspicuous by her absence is Condeleeza Rice - the first black female Secretary of State. I wonder why? |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2009-02-24 19:34 |
| #2 I still love Morgan Freeman's take on the whole thing. "Black History is AMERICAN HISTORY." Amen Freeman. 'nuff said. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2009-02-24 17:44 |
| #1 Clearly a historical apartheid. End it NOW! |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-02-24 12:41 |