Is Black History Month Still Relevant?

Is Black History Month helping expand the divide between two segments of American society? When originally conceived, Black History Week (now, a full month) was established to combat racism, and to stress the importance of the contributions of those citizens of African heritage to the American culture and society, and to establish pride in being part of that segment of society.

And well they should, those brave pioneers who stood up and created this awareness campaign, in an era of Jim Crow laws, rampant lynching, cross-burning, attacking the racist separatist movement that forced that segment of America to the back of the bus and the door in the rear of the restaurant.

But today, has Black History Month become a tool for maintaining that wedge between African Americans and the rest of American society, promoting the very separatism that it was created to destroy?

Black History Week was first started in 1926, and 50 years later was turned into an entire month. The original promoters of the history were members of the Alpha chapter of Omega Psi Phi at Howard University.

But let's look at the preceding three centuries, and what brought Black History Month into existence.

1619 - Dutch traders purchase Black slaves on the Ivory Coast, an already common practice in Europe. Land in the New World and trade the slaves for supplies, and establish the market in the British colonies.

1776 - War of Independence declared against Great Britain.

1789 - Constitution of the United States ratified.

1798 - Last slave brought into the United States legally, with Georgia finally banning the importation of slaves into the new nation.

1859 - Use of slaves in "free" states banned in a landmark case in which Abraham Lincoln represented the slave owner, Robert Matson.

1860 - Civil War breaks out. 50,000 Union soldiers die. Ten times that number estimated seriously wounded, maimed, or crippled.

1865 - Civil War ends, Reconstruction starts. Jim Crow laws spring up all over the South, in an attempt at circumventing the 14^th Amendment.

1867 - Howard University established by a contrite Congress in Washington, D.C. so the new Black citizens could have an institution they could call home for higher education.

1926 - Omega Psi Phi fraternity establishes Black History Week at Howard.

The 100 years following the Civil War were, at best, a mixed bag of results for most members of the Black community, with many leaving the South and coming to the industrialized cities in the North, seeking employment, or at least an opportunity to be free of the racism rampant in the South.

Many worked and scrimped and saved, and 'mainstreamed' themselves into the economic system around them, despite their almost universal inability to obtain an education equal to their White peers. Many were caught in the trap of poverty, incapable of escaping the racism of those around them.

And came along the civil rights movement, and its great leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the truly greatest orators to live in this nation, who demanded, through non-violent means, the overthrow of the system that kept people apart, with a dream of a man being judged solely on his merits and on his contributions, not on the color of his skin.

There was also a large segment of that black-driven movement that wanted a separate Black culture, with separate schools, separate entitlements, separate rules, for the love of God, a separate language. The Black Panther movement and Malcolm X called for the violent overthrow of the United States government.

Dr. King warned against this separatist movement on August 28, 1963:

"The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom."

He also said in that same speech:

"In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline."

And in 1964, the Civil Rights Acts were passed, creating special considerations for minorities, giving them some financial breathing room to reach their full potential, and making it illegal to judge a person based on the color of their skin.

In 1966, Black History Week becomes Black History Month.

Over the ensuing 40 years:

Textbooks were rewritten, with many now in place in public schools devoting a full chapter to the importance of Rosa Parks' defiant act of refusing to move to the back of the bus, and placing Abraham Lincoln's contributions as nearly a footnote with a mere few paragraphs.

Entitlement programs and quota systems are established in higher education, with preference given to Black applicants nearly three decades. That system has almost been abolished, but still holds true in some institutions still under Supreme Court supervision for refusing to integrate their enrollments. Public higher schools continue to track the ethnicity of their applicants.

Welfare rolls remain disproportionately Black, with 34% of the Black community still receiving some form of publicly-funded benefits.

Then came Dr. Bill Cosby's speech to the NAACP in 2004:

"Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go, ra." I don't know who these people are.

And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English.

Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with, "Why you ain't..." You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this.

Well, they know they're not; they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out."

Cosby was vilified by many who consider themselves leaders of the Black community for having the audacity of calling out this segment of his race, for daring to suggest such a "radical" idea. The president of the NAACP and Jesse Jackson both ripped Cosby's comments.

Watching the speech on video was nearly laughable, because the angle of the camera shows Cosby in the forefront, with Jesse Jackson visible over his left shoulder throughout. At the beginning, Jackson is smiling. By the time Cosby got to this part of his speech, you were hoping Jackson didn't have a switchblade in his back pocket, because the look on his face was a thunder cloud of anger.

Jesse Jackson came out of the ashes of Dr. King's murder. Jackson's various causes have been supported by grants from the federal government in the tens of millions of dollars. His son now sits in Congress. There seems little about Dr. Jackson making him resemble his erstwhile mentor, Dr. King.

Jackson has gone to great lengths to put himself in the lens of public comment if a member of his race is involved - even when his support seems to say that if you're Black, you can get away with starting a riot - literally. Jackson was arrested in Decatur, Illinois for just such an act, when he managed to finally tax the limits of the patience of police and judicial authorities by defending 5, 20-something black men, still "enrolled" (although rarely actually attending) high school started a violent riot at a football game.

A movement in the Black community is even now pondering how to separate themselves from the portion of their ethnic group who have refused to take their own destiny into their hands. The great divide appears to be over those who have embraced and mainstreamed themselves into the greater American culture, instead of working toward either dismantling it, or remaining separate from it.

The other segment continues to live in subsidized, or free housing. Twenty-one percent dropping out of high school, a full third of those so dropping out landing in the criminal justice system, some for the rest of their lives. Many of the youngest generation the 5^th or 6^th generation to never have held a full-time job - or even attempted to look for one.

A separatist movement is afoot in Massachusetts even now, with leaders in the Black communities demanding separate schools for their children, and White parents refusing to send their children to inferior schools just so the Supreme Court mandates can be fulfilled.

How does this separatism and segregation end?

Look to the words of Dr. King and Dr. Cosby. They had it right.