Why we need Black History Month at Columbia

Here we are again, that odd month of the year that is mysteriously shorter than the other and gains an extra day every 4 years. There will be Superbowl parties, reservations at restaurants you can’t afford, or perhaps you will sit in solitude and dwell on or revel in your lack of a significant other. That’s right, it’s Black History Month.

Every year in February, our American society does a small pivot and focuses on the history of black Americans. Most of us Americans learned very little in school of the contributions that black Americans have made to this country. Sure, we know the obligatory ones like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Frederick Douglass, but I’m sure there are many who don’t know about other black Americans who have made an indelible impact on our country such as Medgar Evers, Benjamin Banneker, Phillis Wheatley, Elijah McCoy, and Charles Drew. The celebration of Black History month should be seen as a positive way to learn more about the history of our country. A time to focus on a facet of American History that has been largely underrepresented or left out of the history books entirely. But lately, this month, of which is the shortest in the calendar year, has come under fire by some media commentators.

Conservative commentator and token black person at Fox News Stacey Dash has recently voiced her opposition to Black History Month, saying we should get rid of it entirely. Dash believes we shouldn’t have a BET channel, or a Black History Month, because there isn’t a White History Month. She said: “We’re Americans. Period. That’s it.”

That is obviously fucking stupid and completely ignores the reason for the creation of things like BET or the Image Awards or Black History Month. Because for literally centuries, Black Americans were denied the acknowledgement of any contributions whatsoever to the greatness of our nation. They were even denied their humanity. There is no need for a white history month — because every fucking month is white history month. Including this one. But she is right about one thing, we are Americans. Period. So that means we should learn about the contributions of all Americans, not just the ones of European ancestry?

I’m sure some of you are asking yourself what any of this has to do with you. You are a member of one of the more activist campuses in the country and besides, you took Intro to African American History as one of your lit requirements and that girl you pal around with from Art Hum is woke as fuck. Why am I preaching to this choir? Because in my life, most things I have convinced myself of that should be a given, are absolutely not.

Back in November, I covered a student lead protest on campus known as The Blackout for The Tab. Students of color and their white allies stood in solidarity with the students at Mizzou and Yale as part of a nationwide Million Student March after several racially motivated incidents occurred at Mizzou. The protests subsequently lead to the resignation of the University of Missouri President. There was a similar outcome with students at Yale.

Black Lives Matter has become an enormous national grassroots activist organization seeking to end police violence against persons of color and the mass incarceration of black bodies in the United States. It’s been involved in several protests on Columbia University campus. The organization which originally started as a hashtag after the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in Staten Island at the hands of the police, reached a fever pitch of activism in 2015 and has been subsequently vilified in the conservative media.

The current amount of activism in this country involving persons of color and their allies is only rivaled by the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s and 70’s. Persons of color are growing tired of what passes for equality and equity nowadays.  These movements would not have become what they are if black people didn’t feel this way. Black people on this campus included. After all we are the university of Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Langston Hughes, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Adam Clayton Powell, Shirley Chisholm, Septima Poinsette Clark, and the list goes on and on. None of  them have their name chiseled above the door of a building on campus. So because of the current climate surrounding race in the United States, and on Morningside campus, now almost more than any other, is a time we must remember and commemorate the accomplishments of black Americans in this country and at Columbia.

@geneaiken03