Ashley Peaches
As we all know, February is black history month. While I’m all for celebrating culture and teaching America’s children about history, I do not believe that we need a black history month.
I don’t think that black history should even be a phrase in our lexicon. Because black history in America is American history.
However, the current school system is not made to be without a black history month and let me explain why. During the 28 days that is February (sometimes 29), children across America are filled with the ideas of the civil rights movement and inspirational leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, W.E.B. DeBois and Booker T. Washington.
The problem with our current system is that most students only learn about black history for the shortest month of the year. And what they do learn are things that will be taught to them over and over again each year (i.e. the civil rights movement). Honestly, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, read or watched “I Have a Dream.”
An even bigger problem is that while those black people that children are learning about in school are an important part of black history, there are so many more influential black people that are completely skipped over while their white counterpart is taught.
Why don’t children learn about Louis Latimer, the man who discovered a filament that worked better than the filament Thomas Edison discovered, who eventually went on to help build a company called General Electric, aka G.E.?
Why aren’t children taught about Charles Drew, the physician who developed the idea of preserving blood for transfusion – essentially inventing the American blood bank saving thousands of lives during WWII?
Don’t children need to learn about Charles Young, the third man to graduate from West Point Academy who actually stormed San Juan Hill with black Calvary fighters before Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders?
And what about Sidney Poitier, the first black man to win an Oscar and Toni Morrison, the first black person, and black woman, to win a Nobel Prize for literature?
I’m really glad that I got the opportunity to come to Emporia State where I have learned more about my own history in two semesters than I have ever learned from any K-12 classroom.
But when I think about what I did learn, I’m disappointed. Not in the teachers or the university, but really with the fact that I had to take an optional class to learn about what everyone should be learning from day one.
Why is it that part of my history can only be talked about for one month? Why are only certain ideas of what an American is good enough to be taught in American History classes?
My family has been in the United States for hundreds of years, yet I can only find one class on campus (that is only taught every two years) about any part of my heritage.
I think that students should be taught about all Americans in their history classes – American Indians, blacks, women – all of them.
So in the words of Morgan Freeman, you can’t relegate my history to a month: “Black history is American History.” And the idea of having a black history month is “ridiculous.”
Loading ...
