Why Black History Is Not Just for Blacks : Culture: It is important to everyone because it debunks myths and enlightens us to the worth of all people.

Every February, those of us involved in black studies--whether or not we are historians--find ourselves heavily committed to speaking engagements in recognition of Black History Month.

Every year, I find myself in front of rapt audiences--overwhelmingly black--who are thrilled to hear their story. And although we’ve been doing this for many years now, the audiences usually are hearing things about their past for the first time.

Hearing their history can have a transformative effect on Africans and African Americans. Most of us are reared in an intellectual climate that either disparages the contributions of African and African American people or neglects those contributions altogether.

Popular culture is quick to portray African people as underdeveloped, diseased, starving, warlike and impoverished. African Americans are portrayed as violent, criminal, low-achieving, unemployed and on welfare. Although there is a kernel of truth in these portrayals, there is seldom an effort to show how life and culture is a product of historical domination and exploitation. Instead, the tendency is to blame the victim, to attribute the cause of the problems confronting African people to genes or motivation.

The effect of these negative and simplified treatments can be profound: They rob our children of a vision of themselves as the architects of modern civilization. Too many black children are living down to expectations of academic incompetence and social marginality.

But the negative treatment of Africans and African Americans in academe and popular culture has an even more pernicious effect. In order to justify the enslavement of millions of African people and their subsequent separation from the mainstream, it was necessary to demean their character as a people while extolling the nature of their conquerors.

In this respect, Black History Month is especially important to people who need a revision in their thinking--and behavior--relevant to people of color generally and to African and African American people specifically. This revision in thinking removes the blinders on what is popularly viewed as a store of knowledge that is free of cultural bias. One perhaps overworked example of this bias is the myth of Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of America. That this is an instance of white history is revealed when we consider that the Americas were inhabited by tens of millions before Columbus’ arrival.

When one group is idolized at the expense of another, it creates an externalized racism on the part of the group in power and an internalized racism on the part of the group without power. Externalized racism justified treating Africans as chattel; internalized racism is implicated in self-directed violence and aggression. These two forms of racism reinforce each other. To undo one requires the undoing of the other.

America’s past and present are marked by racial segregation. It is therefore not surprising that Black History Month is celebrated in largely segregated contexts. It is as if the majority culture regards Black History Month as the exclusive property of black Americans. Instead, Black History Month should be viewed as the prescription we all need to end the atrocities of a history of racial exploitation and the contemporary reality of racial separation and socially engineered inequality.

What does it do to all Americans to realize that African people mightily contributed to Western civilization? What alterations in our views of the world are required to recognize that the progenitors of Western civilization--the early Greek philosophers--did their most important research and study in Africa? What does it do to the imagination of black children to realize that their forebears were creators of mathematics, astronomy, the domestication of animals and philosophy?

Black history empowers black people to reclaim their rightful place in the world as equal players in contemporary society. As the current patriarch of black history, John Henrik Clarke, is wont to say, “What we have done before, we can do again.” But black history is critically important to the entirety of our society because it debunks the myths of the West and enlightens us to the worth and humanity inherent in all people--including people of African and African American ancestry.