Program Success 2 Black HIstory 2022
Program Success 2 January 2022
Will Critical Race Theory Fights Make This The Last Black History
There I was in third grade onstage in front of the whole school , wearing a tank top , sweatpants and boxing gloves . I don ’ t remember my speech now , but a few weeks before this day , I recorded it on a boombox radio and played it on loop to help me memorize it . I threw a few punches for emphasis at the end of the speech .
I was Muhammad Ali .
A year before , I was on the same stage in my church suit , holding a gavel explaining how I became the first Black man on the Supreme Court .
I was Thurgood Marshall .
This was a yearly ritual at Bunker Hill Elementary School during Black History Month . Students didn ’ t just hear about the heroics of Black people that looked like them , we got to be them . But this was back in the 1980s when all my teachers looked like members of my family . Back when America finally cleared its eyes from the teargas in the 60s and 70s . Before white supremacists started carrying tiki torches , shouting , “ You will not replace us .”
There is currently an assault on the history of America by domestic terrorists who cannot stand the awful truth that the forefathers of this country stole , beat , sold , raped and killed Black people . There is a collective cognitive dissonance in the retelling of America ’ s past by some white people who no longer want to be bound to the history of this country .
Those folks have bastardized “ Critical Race Theory ” to the point that the initial meaning is lost . CRT was intended to look at how systemic racism didn ’ t just hold Black people back , it kept them in the starting blocks . And this isn ’ t a conspiracytheory-laced rant on malt liquor companies ’ targeting of
Black neighborhoods ( although that was part of it , too ), CRT examines how every aspect of Black life , from the air that we breathe , to the way that we bank , to the neighborhoods we live in , has been directly affected by racism .
This isn ’ t debatable .
There have been countless studies , federal bills and more studies that prove it so . But that doesn ’ t matter because the attempts to include Race and , subsequently , the effects of Systemic Racism in the discussion of American history crossed a tenet of white Americana : “ Whatever you do , don ’ t offend White Supremacists .”
So , we come here today to send Black History Month off into the great by and by . Because although Black History Month isn ’ t dead , it ’ s on its last leg . But whatever Black History Month does , it ’ d better not take a knee . So let ’ s imagine , if we will , that this is the last Black History Month ; what do we lose ?
We lose everything .
We ’ d lose all the work that Carter G . Woodson started in 1926 when Negro History Week — which would later become Black History Month — was created . And I know all the jokes around BHM being recognized in the shortest month of the year , but Woodson chose February because it held the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln ( Feb . 12 ) and Frederick Douglass ( Feb . 14 ), two of the pillars in the abolitionist movement .
We ’ d lose Crispus Attucks , W . E . B . Du Bois , Shirley Chisholm and Sojourner Truth , names that are only given their flowers during this time , names that I don ’ t believe would be brought up without a month of celebration behind the work they did . We ’ d lose the inventions of George Crum . Oh , you don ’ t know about George Crum ?