Black history month has, unfortunately, always been a point of contention for my Christian school in Mississippi. When asking the school whether or not we could fully celebrate Black history month through a chapel service, two years in a row the answer has been “We don’t have time for that”, with the non-black student consensus being “We don’t have a White history month, so why do we need Black History Month?”
This year marks a change as we fought for the establishment of a Black Student Union, and a Black history month chapel service. However, the struggle in my own school has raised the question: Do any schools really celebrate Black history month (other than when forced or fought for)?
“It is the word ‘black’ that bothers people in this country and that’s their problem, not mine.” – Stokley Carmichael
The problem primarily lies within Black history month/civil rights history being seen as a trivial matter when compared to the broader elements of education and history in schools. But can American students truly understand their lives and the entirety of American history with the denouncement of Black history? No. Living in America and ignoring Black history means that you don’t know America and its deep racial roots that surround you every day.
In both 2011 and 2014, the Southern Poverty Law Center conducted two studies to examine the quality of Civil Rights history in school. Teaching the Movement 2011 found that “Sixteen states do not require any instruction at all about the movement. These states—along with 19 others whose coverage is minimal (with raw scores from 0 to 15%)—received grades of F.” However, Teaching the Movement 2014 did not find much substantial progress as Georgia, Louisana, and South Carolina were the only states to receive an A in Civil Rights history although seventeen states did go up one letter grade.
“Living in America and ignoring Black history means that you don’t know America and its deep racial roots that surround you everyday.”
The tragedy that corrodes Black history also has to do with the aura of slavery in history classes that is often the only piece of “Black” history that is taught and that usually ends with the (highly flawed/not even remotely beneficial) Emancipation Proclamation.
Black history is also more often than not taught incorrectly, or placed to fit an inherently white dichotomy. Robert L. Harris Jr. wrote that when the only interpretation of Black history is the horrors done to African-Americans, we see a “Catastrophic” imagining of Black history that “most White students resonate” more commonly towards.
The approach that is most beneficiary to African-American students is the “Survivalist” interpretation that illuminates everything that African-Americans have had to overcome and “promotes black achievement despite the odds” up until the present day circumstances of race. This approach is generally less seen in schools and falls to the rise of the catastrophic approach.
Will Black history education get better in the near future? Of that question, I am not positive, but I am positive of the need for the stimulation of Black history dialogue and activism. And that movement starts with you.
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