I just read a news story that’s got me shaking my head. It seems that a preschool in Florida sent out photos via email of their two-year-old charges commemorating Black History Month. The little ones were all white kids dressed as firemen, policemen and other professions…in blackface. The photos were sent to parents as celebratory messages from the school. Two-year-olds in blackface over the caption, “Happy Black History Month.” When an irate African American mother emailed the head of the school to express her outrage, the administrator didn’t understand what was wrong with the activity and the pictures.
“It’s racist,” the African American mom explained.
“I don’t understand,” replied the administrator. “We don’t even use that word around here!”
Let me remind you that this is Florida where the governor, who has presidential aspirations, is currently doing his best George Wallace impersonation by trying to eradicate African American Studies courses and banning books that might make white kids “feel bad.”
This story reminds me of a similar incident in the Bay Area about ten or fifteen years ago. A wealthy, mostly white, Catholic high school decided to honor African Americans during Black History Month by changing its cafeteria menu during February to include fried chicken and watermelon. I wish I were joking here, but I’m not. The school, whose black enrollment at the time was something like eight or ten percent, didn’t understand what they’d done that was so offensive. One of the students who helped to implement the menu was quoted at the time as saying, “We thought black people LIKED fried chicken and watermelon.”
Being black in America is exhausting sometimes.
I’m not a fan of Black History Month. I never have been. Why is the history of my people segregated to just one month out of the year? And the shortest month at that? Why don’t we teach students the comprehensive history of America? I’m talking about the contributions and the transgressions of all people. The good, the bad and the ugly. Why, as a kid, was I taught about the Boston Massacre in October but nothing about the participation and sacrifice of African American patriot Crispus Attucks until the following February?
Why did I have to learn about the 1921 race massacre that obliterated Tulsa’s Black Wall Street on an HBO superhero series instead of in a textbook? Or that a black frontier sheriff named Bass Reeves is believed to have been the inspiration for the Lone Ranger on the NBC show, Timeless? Black History is American History. If it was taught honestly and appropriately, you wouldn’t have teachers who are oblivious to the fact that toddlers in blackface is offensive and demeaning or high school students who think that serving fried chicken and watermelon is a way of honoring people of color.
Telling the full story isn’t just for the black kids (although it would have meant a lot to me as the only black student in my class to know that my people made a huge contribution in the building and development of this country); it’s for the white kids too. Maybe even more so, because it would promote an understanding of the struggle that African American people have had for a seat at the table we call the United States. With understanding comes empathy. With empathy comes compassion and a regard for the plight and feelings of the oppressed.
Telling the whole story, the whole truth, would help us come a long way in healing the racial wounds that so often divide us.