How You Can Celebrate Black History Month
February 1st marks the beginning of Black History Month in America. It is a time when we remember civil rights leaders and advocates like Carter G. Woodson, Harriet Tubman, WEB Dubois, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Thurgood Marshall, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Fred Hampton, Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer, and the list goes on and on…
But let’s keep it real, you can’t sum up 405 years of pain, suffering, and struggling, with a dash of wins, and a sprinkle of historical firsts, in just 29 days, or think you can gain a clear understanding about a group of people in such a short amount of time.
But let’s at least make an effort.
This year before you rush out to Target and buy one piece of Black History Month merchandise, I’m going to need you to do the following:
End the pay gap
Stop redlining
Eliminate voter suppression
Call out racism when you see it
Speak out against police brutality
Fight for equality in healthcare
Teach Black history year round
Buy from Black owned businesses
Tell State governments to give the 18 land-grant HBCUs the billions of dollars that they are still owed
Support your Black co-workers during the oppressive moments, not afterwards at the water cooler
Buy banned books
Stop negating and dismissing the struggles of Black folk
Learn how to center blackness in your research, education, policy making, leadership, politics, and economics
Learn the meaning of the word racist
Do your own research regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and who really benefits from it and DEI
Understand that if you are Black, having a proximity to whiteness does not make you white, nor does it guarantee that white folk will accept you
“Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves,” ~ James Baldwin