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History
should be taught all year, not just for one month What is the relevance of Black History Month? In an ideal world or even a nation which lived up to real democratic principles, it would be totally unnecessary. The reality is that we don’t live in an ideal world, and in a real democracy 1 percent of the population does not control the majority of the wealth, as in America. John Henrik Clarke, a black historian, said “To control a people you must first control what they think about themselves and how they regard their history and culture. And when your conqueror makes you ashamed of your culture and your history, he needs no prison walls and no chains to hold you.” For hundreds of years, and some would argue that even still today, the African man has been generally regarded by Western society as a “nothing”: An uncivilized, unsophisticated, simple-minded creature created with the expressed purpose of serving the superior races. I would like to believe that today only a very small percentage of people in the world still believe this. The purpose of Black History Month, however, is not to condemn the white man as some naive people may think, but rather, to inform everyone of the accomplishments of black people, not only in Western civilization, but throughout the history of the world. This is the point to the extent that such racism that has existed in the world abroad for so many years will never be a dominant force again. Simply put, racism and hatred exist mainly because of ignorance. This is not the typical column giving praise to America for the progress that we have made, but rather it is to remind us how far we still need go. Despite the accomplishments of blacks and other minorities in America, we still seem to have major problems in “race” (a word which itself causes division) relations. I also will not waste one paragraph to celebrate these accomplishments as if they were conclusions to fight for equality. While it appears that our nation has made great leaps toward being the democracy that we have claimed to be for the last 200 years, it appears that we have only replaced our racist tendencies with “classist” ones. Since blacks, for the most part, remain in the lowest classes, blacks and other minority groups end up fighting an old struggle only with a new name. If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today I think that his passion would be just as fervent. When more black males are in prison than in college, there is still a definite and obvious problem. When the rampant racial profiling of blacks and Hispanics is very prominent and has now only been temporarily downgraded by the rampant racial and religious profiling of Arabs and Muslims, we still have a problem. In reality, if the truth was taught the other 11 months of the year, we wouldn’t need Black History Month.
John Sargent is a sophomore philosophy major from Fort Worth. He can be contacted at (j.w.sargent@student.tcu.edu). |
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