Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Black History in a nutshell

The Library of Congress is calling it African American History Month instead of Black History Month which is probably more appropriate - I don't think that the focus is on the history of all peoples of African heritage - which really means all humanity if you want to get technical and subscribe to the "out of Africa" theory like most scientists do.

There are lots of other good resources for this history month, such as the Smithsonian's and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History - the founders of Black History Month (so if they call it "Black History Month"...) so I won't go into the timeline or the Civil Rights movement or all the Black leaders and artists and inventors etc. Instead, I will say this - the more I read about the history of Black people in America from many different sources, the more I realize:
Black people built America; and then gave it a beautiful and vibrant culture, including inventing jazz, blues, rock and roll and hip-hop - in other words the entire world's favorite music; and then gave us one of the best presidents of all time, and all of this while being treated like absolute shit - up to and including 300 years of being classified as property. There is no achievement to match this in the history of the world. America owes a debt to Black people that it will never be able to repay.
That's what we should be thinking about for Black History Month.