Some additional thoughts on Black History Month

Last week there was a local book store who was doing a seminar on black literature for black history month. This book store rocks, and is incredibly well respected in the community for good reason. I met Billy Corgan & Hunter Thompson there too. Anyhow, in their nice little ad they had pictures of all the famous people coming to town to sign their books. I looked at the picture beside the black history literature seminar thingy and saw... a white woman. You can imagine I flew into a liberal white rage fit. I thought that they couldn't even trust a black person to deliver a black lecture on black history in black literature. I thought this must be indicative of the black person's experience in life. Of course, I don't know shit about the black person's experience.

The more I thought about it, though, the more my perception on that completely changed. I think, instead, having a white person deliver a seminar on black history could be a great thing... a bellwether achievement. Why? Because to only have black people examine the black experience seems patronizing. To only use blacks in the process of this discussion would be to marginalize their impact and contributions to society. Am I making sense here? In college, I was working towards a lit degree. I took a class in black literature, and the teacher was white. He was great and passionate and taught me so much... and he didn't have to be black. He could still effectively appreciate and communicate what he had learned. In fact, it is possible he was able to give us additional insight as it filtered through his whiteness.

My point being this: I think Black History Month is something we all should discuss and celebrate... not just blacks. When it becomes something that we all embrace, only then we are making progress.