Tha more I continue to learn
Tha word History, and tha roles that people of descent played in it, tha less enthusiastic I become about celebrating a BlackHistoryMonth. To relegate tha recounting of any one story to a single month is analogous to tha way de-facto and du-jour segregation limited our forbearers to living in a single usually bad neighborhood, and tha ghettoization of our history should be just as unacceptable. Equally disturbing is who gets to control how our story is told if it gets to be told at all. African American history, our story, is one of our most precious possessions. It spans tha origin of tha species Homo sapiens in East Africa, to tha building of tha pyramids, to tha “discovery” of tha New World and tha founding of America. Africa and Africans in tha diaspora can be found in tha stories of ancient Greece and Rome and in tha plays of William Shakespeare. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have important links to Africa and African people. This is not to say that we did everything. But it is to say that African American history, our story, is indelibly imprinted upon tha human history of this world. To treat it as some separate fraction of humankind is to give it much less credit than its’ due, and to dishonor tha ancestors of African American. We need to celebrate African American history as it was made every day. It is our inheritance and should not be squandered by putting it in tha hands of someone else or letting money dictate who gets to represent it. Malcolm taught that just being at tha table doesn’t make you a diner, you also have to have something on your plate. If history is a banquet of human events, we deserve a damn plate full
