Topic: Is Black History Month Still Relevant?

[Ken (OP)]

This is an excerpt from an article by Jeff Mays on the BlackVoices website:

Black History Month Still Relevant -- for Now

By Jeff Mays on Jan 27th 2010

As a young journalist in Dallas, I wrote a column for my high school newspaper discussing why Black History Month was no longer necessary.

I recently pulled the column from the dusty blue binder that one of my mentors, Rochelle Riley, a columnist for the Detroit Free Press, gave me to store my clips in way back when.

Aside from marveling at how young I looked, I was also amazed at what I wrote. I said that Black History Month was not necessary because black history should be taught all year round and that it was a significant part of American history.

Besides, I said, the month had been reduced to talking about how many uses for the peanut George Washington Carver had discovered. The answer: More than 100, including paint, fuel, plastic explosives.

The column was well received. I won the top individual writing award given to high school students in Texas, and it was a topic of discussion around my school for a day or so. (That's saying a lot for high school kids with attention spans shorter than the wick of a birthday candle.)

But as I look back on the article, it doesn't seem that black history has become an integral part of American history in the 17 years since I wrote that column. Even though we have an African American president and Oprah has her own television network, stereotypes about African Americans abound.

Read the Full Article Here

[Skhilled]

This is true but history has always been askew towards those in power. There have been many contributions by many different races in many different countries but are ignored in the history books. Columbus was credited with discovering America but it is named after Amerigo Vespucci. Even Vasco Da Gama and Ferdinand Megellan were there before Columbus. But the Vikings, Leif Ericson and Eric The Red discovered America hundreds of years before then???

Hmmm, how do you discover something when people are already living there???  :yikes: Go figure...but these are just a few of the lies that history has told to make someone or a group of people look better than someone else. If you look it up, there is even proof of a female pope but most of her existence within the church was erased.

My point is the facts should be as they are, the facts...no matter who did what.