February, The Token Black Month

What things do we do to celebrate Black History Month? We do important things, like honor and educate ourselves about some notable black figures and moments in American history. We do things that don’t really mean much, like watch BET for a day or eat a “traditional southern” meal. We do downright silly things like drink chocolate milk instead of white milk to celebrate or complain that there is no white history month. (I didn’t make those last two up, I promise.) So when you look at what we do for Black History Month, celebrating many of the positives of black history and culture, one must ask if we’re doing much of anything to stop the negative aspects of black history from repeating themselves?

Black History Month exist for the benefit of black people in America but we should ask ourselves why it’s was necessary to begin with. Looking at the history of Black History Month we find that it was established by Carter G. Woodson, a black scholar who was one of the first individuals to study black history specifically. He collaborated with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History to establish “Negro History Week” in 1926 and this grew over time until 1976 when it was recognized by the US government as a full month. President Gerald Ford encouraged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” In order to combat an aspect of White Supremacy, that being the focus of education on white history, Black History Month was born. An act of equality meant to give black people our rightful place in education and history. The issue now is that very little progress has been made in this act since then, it started as a week, became a month, and no real growth from there. What have we been doing every February?

Has Black History Month pushed our society forward each year in being more accepting of people of color and brought us closer to the ultimate goal of equality? Largely no, it’s served a purpose similar to that of the token black friend. It’s important for that comparison to try and define “token black”. “A black male or female used by major media to create the illusion of diversity…” I would say that’s a fair assessment of the concept. Speaking from experience, a token black is the black person kept around to make sure things don’t seem racist usually by way of simple proximity. The issue here is that we aren’t addressing whether things are actually racist and oftentimes are reinforcing racist ideas and stereotypes, all for appearances. The token black concept is one of the lesser known aspects of white privilege but is still very harmful. A white person uses a black person to soothe white guilt and avoid having to confront racism, token black friends are used to shield their white friend’s allegations of racism. I bring up the ideas and issues of token blacks because it seems that we’ve taken the concept and applied it to a month. How can we be considered a racist society when we dedicate an entire month to a culture’s history? This logic seems to benefit white people, but what are black people gaining and is it worth it?

Black people in America hoped we would gain historical recognition and cultural relevance in the month of February, that would eventually grow into an ongoing act of integration. It now more or less is a time to learn about the same few figures from elementary school, sell more of Lebron James’ shoes with “Pan African” color schemes, and pretend that racism is a thing of the past that we should no longer have to look at. Black History Month is a good and necessary thing, it’s a time to remember what oppressed historical figures have contributed to this country. What isn’t good enough is the fact that we should celebrate these people all the time and what is forgotten is that even though their accomplishments are great, we still have a great deal of progress to make. Black History Month has been coopted as a time to feel like we aren’t racist and are a well-integrated society but when we ask ourselves honest questions, those feelings don’t seem to match reality. Why do we still have to force black history on society for a month? Why are we still segregating American history? Why do we still need to set aside months to recognize historical non-white people? We need Black History Month but we also need to see progress at some point, educating people about the histories of all oppressed peoples in this country in an equal manner should be the goal and we’ve at best taken a few slow steps towards this goal.

I feel that many of us celebrate black history while we ignore the present reality of blacks. I do hope that we all learn things together about black culture and history this month, that was the intention and it was a good intention. Sadly good intentions can only lead so far, and acknowledging history while simultaneously ignoring it is a recipe for disaster. Martin Luther King Jr is someone I’m sure we’ll be encouraged to celebrate this month and he was a man all about taking action in the name of positive change, so let’s honor that. For black people, I believe this means to educate yourself and others to the best of your ability. For white people, put down the glass of chocolate milk, take off the post-racial rose colored glasses, and have a real talk about race with the token black or anybody really. I hope that February is a time where we continue to acknowledge historical black excellence but more so I hope that it doesn’t only last until February 29th. A week came from nothing, a month grew from there, now let’s try and make this a lifetime deal.