2008 Woodie Awards
Black History: More than MLK, Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks
Rolake Omoregi
Issue date: 2/10/05 Section: Opinion
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It took having to write an article about Black History Month to realize that I had given up on it a long time ago. I've tried to trace the exact year and moment that I gave up on this fairly recent American tradition, and I narrowed the journey of disassociation from February of 1998 to February of 2002. I couldn't stand the trivialization and superficiality of the way I have seen Black History month celebrated.
I found that, now and then, we still approach Black History Month the way Americans visit other countries - you stay at the tourist area of the country and try some exotic food, but for the most part, you stick to the regimen you are used to at home.
You come back, rap up a few facts about their population, how they live in comparison to us, and what you perceive to be their problem. You bring home some exotic outfit or native painting, and then revert to your normal standard of living. Having done this, you see yourself as more knowledgeable, but all you've done is fooled yourself, because you are still the same person. Nothing has changed.
I was tired of people who would denounce racism eloquently and publicly, but spend the rest of the months complaining about lazy minorities, blind to barriers unthinkable to people of their class and stature. At that delicate age I was tired of learning over and over about Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks as if they were the only black faces that had ever achieved anything in the history of black people. Others, like Frederick M. Jones, Richard Spikes, Charles Drew, Alexander Miles, George Washington Carver, Alexander Dumas, Mariam E. Benjamin, Rachel Fuller Brown and Patricia Billings, to name a few, have been neglected.
I was tired of seeing my teachers bend over backwards to avoid unearthing the buried history of slavery; when I asked about the devices used to govern black people during the days of Jim Crow, and if there was any validity to my grandfather's stories of piercing the upper and lower lips to padlock the mouths of slaves, they responded with, "those times are over. You're free. Why would you want to know that?"
I found that, now and then, we still approach Black History Month the way Americans visit other countries - you stay at the tourist area of the country and try some exotic food, but for the most part, you stick to the regimen you are used to at home.
You come back, rap up a few facts about their population, how they live in comparison to us, and what you perceive to be their problem. You bring home some exotic outfit or native painting, and then revert to your normal standard of living. Having done this, you see yourself as more knowledgeable, but all you've done is fooled yourself, because you are still the same person. Nothing has changed.
I was tired of people who would denounce racism eloquently and publicly, but spend the rest of the months complaining about lazy minorities, blind to barriers unthinkable to people of their class and stature. At that delicate age I was tired of learning over and over about Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks as if they were the only black faces that had ever achieved anything in the history of black people. Others, like Frederick M. Jones, Richard Spikes, Charles Drew, Alexander Miles, George Washington Carver, Alexander Dumas, Mariam E. Benjamin, Rachel Fuller Brown and Patricia Billings, to name a few, have been neglected.
I was tired of seeing my teachers bend over backwards to avoid unearthing the buried history of slavery; when I asked about the devices used to govern black people during the days of Jim Crow, and if there was any validity to my grandfather's stories of piercing the upper and lower lips to padlock the mouths of slaves, they responded with, "those times are over. You're free. Why would you want to know that?"