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Views on “Black History Month

I think he has a point on the issue of the relegation of black history to a month as seen in our education system etc. I have argued this for years. However, I think he should also remember the circumstances and time through which this was developed. O.k. …these circumstances no longer exists, at least superficially, so the fight should be now to mandate that African history is permanently made a fundamental part of educational curriculums. So I understand his point on this, if I am reading what his opinions clearly.

However, I really don’t understand what the hell he means by, “the only way to get rid of racism is to "stop talking about it.” WT??????????

What do you guys think?

Excerpts:
NEW YORK - Morgan Freeman says the concept of a month dedicated to black history is "ridiculous."

"You're going to relegate my history to a month?" the 68-year-old actor says in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" to air Sunday (7 p.m. EST). "I don't want a black history month. Black history is American history."

… A Freeman note there is no "white history month," and says the only way to get rid of racism is to "stop talking about it."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10482634/from/RSS/

He right....and we have de shortest month tuh boot!

What I hate about Black History Month in Canada is the fact that it is all recent African American history. I don't celebrate it. I'm fed up of hearing the first this, the first that, who invented this and who invented that.

I have my Vincentian Heritage Month to celebrate in March.

All yuh have a month? You doin big things in Canada. I understand the discontent wit havin only present accomplishments of Blacks. Even here in the states they do not discuss Blacks during the pre-slavery era as though we only got existence when they started exportin our ancestors from Africa to the Western Hemisphere. This jus proves that they are tryin to condition us to believe thas where we come from, that we stem from so-called chattel who needed white people to tend to them as a mother to a child. Bein a history major in school I get to read material showcasin our accomplishments, but not everyone wants to read it, is exposed to it, or even is allowed to get beneath surface so we need to make sure that when we have our children that we educate them properly so when they want to tell our children that fukcery they can tell them where to suck.

In all honesty, I don’t think that the reason behind February being African History Month necessarily has to do with any dark conspiracy on the part of Euro-America or their well-known condescending ways. From what I’ve gathered it appears that it was in honour of the man who was the driving force behind it in the first place, Carter G Woodson. Woodson, who in 1935 wrote an excellent book, that sadly, is still relevant today, called “The Mis-education of the Negro”, was born in February.

Frankly I’m not surprised to hear Morgan Freeman talk about that; I have for a long time all but dismissed him since in at least two previous interviews he took issue with the term “African” in African-American; he apparently did not see himself as one. There is a term in hostage rescue situations called the “Stockholm Syndrome” in which the captured person, overwhelmed by the power the hostage-taker has over his/her life and death, actually begins to identify with their captor and his cause, values, etc. Most people whose history in a society is one of being colonised, powerless, exploited suffer from this in one form or another. Morgan of course, is no exception. Further, to state that the only way to stop racism is to “stop talking about it” is so patently stupid and naïve, it’s no wonder that we can’t get anywhere in society.

On the one he is so correct in stating you can’t compress the history of African people anywhere in the world into one month. That’s rubbish. But I have had a problem with celebrations like African History month or Trinidad’s Emancipation Day for a number of other reasons. I believe that these occasions should be the culmination of a whole year of activities and awareness. The next thing is in direct relation to what p’tanimas was speaking about; the teaching of history (any kind, not just African) in North America and most parts of the Caribbean is almost always done in a vacuum devoid of context and links with the wider contemporary society. It is more about who did this, that or the other in such a way that is more hubris than history. The US in particular is notorious for teaching history and geography in such a way as to make the student almost completely ignorant of the existence of how that history and that geography fits in to the rest of the world (note at this point that a survey conducted some years ago revealed that 13% of US citizens did not know where Canada was located).

Oh, that's rich, trying to claim the Stockholm syndrom on Freeman. Yeah he has been imrisoned and submitted to the stress and brainwashing of those cases. LMAO.

*sigh*(with eye roll)

That was my feeling exactly.

So tell me, do you subscribe to his poinnt of view? And what indeed are the reasons of people of colour in the Americas not empowering themselves?

Ananci
you made a few good points
But, have you ever lived in the US and been subjected to the structural violence that is racism here? Not to say that this may not be happening in Trinidad

Interesting. You seem to imply that Africans in America have not been subjected to a thorough brainwashing to this very day.

Interesting.

A bunch of things. Some like racism are still an issue, but also just the economic disparity from prior discrimination and yes, lastly many people practice auto-defeatism as they seek to focus on the blame game and not on finding solutions game.

I see brainwashed peope every day. But the biggest effect of opression i have seen is not an attempt to want to coddle those seen as opressors, but an instinctive distrust of anything by the government or people seen as white, to such a degree that it actually inhibits progress.

The fact is, while discrimination exists, Afro-Americans are suffering from victimism a lot more than any other Afro-Diasporic group. It is no accident that Afro-Carribbean and African people are progressing at higher rates in this country and that while there is a rise in Afro-Diasporic people in higher education, the majority is not Afro-American but African and Afro-Caribbean.

You will get no argument from me with regard to many African-Americans and indeed Afri-Caribbeans, using racism as an excuse for their own self-defeatism. I even find in what passes for African history, that the pendulum often swings from one extreme to another; either hubris or the eternal victim. That, however, does not change the fact that the ideology of white superiority is and has been emphasised in all areas of society in the West. The US is perhaps the most blatant and thuggish. We have to read this “brainwashing”, this mental conditioning in the context of a sustained attempt to keep Africans in the US subjugated and in a perpetual state of fear and dependency. The Civil Rights struggle did a lot to level the field, but it was still under the umbrella of white social, political and military/police power which they used without hesitation over and over to keep hammering that message. One may laugh and roll one’s eyes, but I dare you to prove otherwise. That Afri-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean people “make it” in the US has more to do with their own brand of militancy that they came with. I have said it before that it was because of the subtleties of British racism in the Caribbean that one of the side-effects was that the colonial subject was imbued with an illusory sense of limited power in that s/he had access to certain institutions that his counterpart in the US did not have until quite recently. Also, in the Caribbean during the enslavement periods, enslaved African families were not broken up as much as the US and whereas in the US most slave revolts were betrayed by the house-slaves, in the Caribbean, many of them were planned by the house-slaves. All this and numerous other factors have to be understood to see why the African-American either passively assimilated, or simply gave up.

And no, Fryplantain, I have never lived in the US although I have visited. I can say I experienced and seen examples of Uncle Sam’s prejudice not only in the US but right here in Trinidad having interacted with many US servicemen. BTW, I have similar experiences with British servicemen as well as French (although with the French, since we were the instructors and they the instructed, they simply had to keep dey ass quiet ).

I’m wondering though, why the question? Could it be that a person in Trinidad or wherever cannot or should not establish solidarity with someone who is subjected to dehumanising treatment, racism, violence, etc, in another part of the world?

No argument there. Colonialism was brutal and its effects are felt to this day.

Argument here. I disagree completely. I do not think there has been a sustained attempt from the overturning of separate but equal forward. I beleive the effects are still felt and it is really hard to reverse the tide especially with attitude innoculation set in so well. But there aren't attempts to perpetuate this victimism, and in fact it is one of the biggest thorns for any attempt at remedy. There are so many things wrong with the system, but people cry wolf so many times as well, that it weakens the power you have to identify legitimate acts of discrimination. And the desire to create change for the better is also tempered with exasperation each time change is attempted and is seen as plots to oppress disguised as help.

Boyd, Herb. "The Man and the Plan: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in Our Culture." Black Issues Book Review 4 (March-April, 2002): 38-40.

Bogart, Laura M. and Sheryl Thorburn. "Are HIV/AIDS Conspiracy Beliefs a Barrier to HIV Prevention Among African Americans?" Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes 38 (February 1, 2005): 213-218..

Crocker, J., R. Luhtanen, S. Broadnax and B.E. Blaine. "Belief in US Government Conspiracies against Blacks among Black and White College Students: Powerlessness or System Blame?" Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 25 (August 1999): 941-953.

Hutchinson, Earl Ofari. "Chasing Conspiracy Shadows." In Hutchinson, Earl Ofari. The Crisis in Black and Black. Los Angeles, CA: Middle Passage Press, 1997.

Parsons, Sharon, William Simmons, Frankie Shinhoster and John Kilburn. "A Test of the Grapevine: An Empirical Examination of Conspiracy Theories Among African Americans." Sociological Spectrum 19 (April-June 1999): 201-222.

Ruffins, Paul. "The Tuskegee Experiment's Long Shadow: Scholars Examine the Impact of Conspiracy Theories on African Americans." Black Issues in Higher Education 15 (October 29, 1998): 26-28.

Sasson, Theodore. "African American Conspiracy Theories and the Social Construction of Crime." Sociological Inquiry 65 (1995): 265-285.

Turner, Patricia. I Heard It Through the Grapevine: Rumor in African-American Culture. BerkeleyCA: University of California Press, 1993.

Waters, Anita M. "Conspiracy Theories as Ethnosociologies: Explanation and Intention in African American Political Culture." Journal of Black Studies 28 (September 1997): 112-125.


A good example:
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/21127/

[/QUOTE]The Civil Rights struggle did a lot to level the field, but it was still under the umbrella of white social, political and military/police power which they used without hesitation over and over to keep hammering that message. One may laugh and roll one’s eyes, but I dare you to prove otherwise.[/QUOTE]

Not sure what exactly your claim is, so i will say, present your evidence first and then I will see if i agree or disagree with your contention. Was all civil rights under the umrella of US governmental power? Yes. The police and military where everywhere.

You would have to elaborate more.

Could be. I see a big difference in the reversal of fortune that occured in the betrayal by hayes after the Tilden-Hayes election. Before this, after emancipation, the Afro-American population showed enourmous strided in education, business development growth of political power, etc.

But Hayes made a promise to remove Union troops from the South to gain the presidency. When he did, all hell broke loose in the South. What many call the Black Holocaust began in earnest in this period with more violent deaths proportionately than even slavery times. I think this snese of being betrayed and learning to never trust the establishment really begins here. As before there was a sense of hope that was much stronger and could be seen in how Afro-Americans progressed in levels that haven't been matched. Now there is a sense of instinctive distrust that is palpable everywhere.