So...it's October. The one month a year where diversity pays. The one month a year where companies will look at one of their black employees, give them a microphone and say ‘tell us about your experience’. The one month a year where you’ll see more black faces on your TV shows, see more black bodies in your clothing adverts, hear more black voices on your radio or podcasts. The one month a year where being black pays the cheque. The one month a year where social media is, relatively, filled with ‘black history’ posts. The one month a year where the ‘black experience’ is the story being told, pushing aside the archetypal white narrative that we feed into the other eleven months of the year.
It’s also the one month a year where you might, I say might since this rarely happened at my high school, sit through an assembly which reduces the umbrella phrase ‘black history’ and all it encompasses into an hour slot on some random Wednesday afternoon. You might have a black speaker visit your school, if you were lucky enough to attend a school where the 90% white majority of your student council didn’t rule against a black history month assembly because ‘not everything is about race’. If a speaker did grace your school hall with one hour of their time, I can rest assured that this speaker barely touched on their own story, as a black person, but gave the generic talk on Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Nelson Mandela. I can also safely say that this talk was probably the same talk given year after year, formulated
with a quick Google search of ‘famous black people’ or ‘facts about the Civil Rights Movement’ with little thought into any history beyond these ubiquitous household names (my mentioning of such figures like MTK or Nelson Mandela does not, of course, take away from their impact on, and relevance to, black history but, in my opinion, reduces their name to a preprogramed surrogate which white people, the ones who probably made this talk in the first place, use when talking about black history.)
However, if you’re anything like me, then you were hindered the very opportunity to even listen to a one hour special on ‘black history’ because, like I said before, your white student council voted against it or perhaps the phrase ‘black history month’ didn’t have the chance to escape anyone's mouth, as it did not occur to these white kids or these white adults that black history even matters. I find ominous similarities between the way people generally discuss black history month (BHM) and the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM), such that when they are mentioned, especially among white people, there is a tension. A sudden jolt, a head raise or a nervous stare is made between two white people when someone utters the words ‘black lives matter’ or ‘black history month’, like the word black itself has incited an ancient curse into the room. By this I mean people don’t know what to do with themselves, especially those who don’t believe that black history month should be a ‘thing’. That 'awkward' conversation of ‘what history is worth being told’ and ‘how can we talk about black lives without making everything too ‘racial’ is commonplace during October.
Especially in the context of a school or work environment, there is this notion that emphasising BLM or BHM could create some enemies, racist enemies who may sit at the top of this workplace hierarchy (and no one wants to piss off the big guys who write our cheques). There is this idea that recognising black history is ‘too political’ and being ‘political’ is informal (even though the BLM movement is not strictly a political movement, and promoting black history month is not an indicator of one's political leanings as such).
It used to frighten me knowing that some of my high school teachers and peers secretly harboured racist views and were notably highly strung when October came around. During this month, the resentment and anger towards black people (for what reason, I don’t know) that racists hold is, probably, spotlighted within themselves, and many take to social media (hiding behind a screen, like all good keyboard warriors do) to remind everyone else why they hate black people. One could say, and may have, that BHM is a time that reminds racists that they hate black people, just because they exist and so does their history. This is unfair, I know. To even consider erasing the only month a year where black history is discussed and taught. This problem, though, is the result of the way our society has treated black history month.
This one month of acknowledgement for an entire race is like a ‘limited time only’ deal from a retail company or a one hour long special of a usually 30 minute long episode of a TV show. It’s like the entire white population of Britain has been generous enough to privilege black people with 31 days of acknowledgement, because God forbid we give black people any more than a month to feel seen and heard.
Why is the teaching of black history itself isolated to a single month and not integrated into the other 334 days of the year? We’ve made black history seem so foreign and alien when it’s an antiquity that has been pivotal for the history of the entire world.
In the same way that Donald Trump likened actions of the so-called ‘anarchists’ protesting against the murder of George Floyd to being 'unamerican', we're socialised to believe that England and American's history that England and American's history is strictly white and that acknowledging anything beyond this paradigmatic narrative
is heinous. When in fact, the people who built and strengthened this country and the U.S were part of this alien group; black people whose livelihood is ‘other’ to the white standard.
Think about it, when is white history month. It’s every other month of the year. All I've ever been taught in a formal academic setting was history through a white lens. Even in my year 3 history class, I remember that we were told to paint pictures of ancient Egyptians with peach coloured paint, like these north-eastern African pharaohs were pigmented anything like me. This whitewashed version of the world that I was socialised to see as the standard was not confined to merely history, but even make-believe was exhibited from a white perspective.
Why is father Christmas white? Yes, his homeland may contribute to his fair complexion, but why must this fictional benevolent figure be white? Why must the ‘existence’ of a man who comes down the chimney of every child on the planet’s home be moulded around the white narrative? And like father Christmas, who comes around one night of the year, why must we only talk about black history for one month?
This post isn’t about Santa Clause or any other globally recognised white fictional character, but about the purpose of black history month. The BHM that we’ve created is not one that values the efforts of ‘regular’ black people, acknowledges the historic
torment we (as white people) put an entire race through, recognising
cognising the systematic marginalisation and changing it, but instead focuses on the pacification of black people. We’re only ever taught about the parts of black history that make white people feel comfortable. A constant reel of ‘feel good’ stories of the Civil Rights is replayed every year yet record of the atrocities that we (again, white people) have committed is left on mute.
If we’re going to celebrate the lives of black people for 31 days, why not mourn their deaths too? Christopher Alder, a former army paratrooper, was taken to hospital due to an injury from a fight, but was then arrested and left in police custody in Hull, where CCTV footage shows Alder, a black man, lying motionless with his trousers wrapped around his ankles, surrounded by laughing police officers. Christopher died in those 10 minutes that he laid on the floor. Sean Riggs who, after suffering a mental health breakdown in 2008, was killed by ‘excessive force’ in this Brixton police station. Sheku Bayoh was murdered after suffering 23 injuries at the hands of police officers in 2015. Michael Powell was killed in police custody due to asphyxiation in 2003. To go on, Mark Duggon, Ricky Bishop, Leon Briggs, all murdered by the police.
If we’re going to celebrate black history, let’s not deny the efforts that the Windrush generation gave for this country, and better yet, let’s not deny their right to live in England. Let's not deport them back to a country that we’ve made into a foreign land for them.
If we're going to celebrate black history, let’s not simultaneously celebrate the inexcusable kidnapping and exploitation of black people through publicly displaying
statues of racists and colonialists. Let’s not exhibit Christopher Columbus, who’s colonisation of the New World led to the slaughter of 3 million people. Let’s not display Sir Henry De La Beche at Imperial College London, who ran a slave plantation. Let’s not remember Thomas Guy, a shareholder in the South Sea Company, a company responsible for the owning of 64,000 black people. Let’s not commemorate Henry Dundas, who denied the abolition of slavery in 1792, resulting in another 15 years of legal slavery which took 630,000 more black people as slaves. [A full list of the statues that the Black Lives Matter Movement insists to be toppled is here.]
With what 2020 has revealed to us, it is even more obvious now that black pain must
be acknowledged. It is also salient that black joy must be shared. I am white, so it is not my say on what this month should consist of (just by being white, I have robbed black voices enough in my lifetime). Whether it is the generic school presentations of MLK and Rosa Parks, whether it is more black creator content being shared on social media, whether it is a TV broadcast of Black Panther, whatever it is, I hope it continues throughout the whole year. I hope we add colour to these whitewashed history classes I hope we ‘diversify’ the UK’s national curriculum, I hope racists learn that the existence of black people is not an existence than can be erased or rebuked and I hope that we (once again, white people) acknowledge, appreciate and celebrate black history 365 days of the year.
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