This commemorative month serves as a mirror of the prevailing political atmosphere, so how do we revamp it?
This is Black History Month in the UK, and it feels like it’s time for a reassessment. Throughout its history, an event that started out as a festivity and recollection of the past, cultural identity and bonds between international African diaspora communities, has adopted a business-like atmosphere, growing to encompass gatherings where African descendants are remunerated to address white audiences about implicit prejudice and active solidarity. The anti-racism rallies of the last decade created a surge in the business of demonstrating racial awareness. However, that period has concluded. The surge has peaked, resulting in a somewhat empty inheritance of what increasing understanding is for.
The History of Black History Month
Initially celebrated in the America and its northern neighbor, Black History Month was conceived in 1962 as a week dedicated to Negro history by historian of African descent Carter G. Woodson with seven days of commemoration and observance in the middle of February. Black History Month developed from this initiative and was formally inaugurated in 1970. Currently it is marked not only in the North America in the second month, but also in October in the United Kingdom, Deutschland, Ireland and the the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
The period has developed since those days, focusing less on the accounts of colonial slavery and civil rights battles, and greater focus on notable African descendants in public life, creative fields, and advocacy, and extensively acknowledging the impact Black people have made to influence the nation. It is in learning environments where Black History Month is most commonly celebrated, with talks and cultural events. But the way the observance is celebrated is a indication of the contemporary political context. How it develops is a valuable example in how appropriation leads to dismantling: the restructuring of Black History Month has stymied the objective of it, which is to confront systemic and institutional racism.
A Jarring Moment
Little demonstrates how critical it is to reevaluate Black History Month as much as the current time in which it takes place this year. In the United Kingdom, a resurgent right in the form of the Reform political group is ahead in surveys. In the recent season we witnessed the biggest extreme right demonstration in the UK's past. a prominent political figure, the Black leader of the Conservative party, is a strong critic of Black Lives Matter, and we are in a situation where a elected representative feels emboldened to say that “not seeing any white faces” in parts of a city is a cause for alarm. Meanwhile, extreme conservative groups are expanding in the EU as a complete entity.
In the America, a significant offensive against DEI and affirmative action has been carried, repeatedly with positive outcomes, to the highest courts of the nation. A drive to scrub the history of people of color and experience from the historical documents is under way. One of Donald Trump's first executive orders targeted the museum of African American legacy, and the Smithsonian Institution, accusing them of a “concerted and widespread effort to change the national past” by representing the nation “as naturally discriminatory”.
Given these circumstances, the celebration illustrates how insufficiently it can be influential if it is restricted to either routine organizational acknowledgments, or depoliticized festivities of contributions in the past, rather than challenging the realities of the contemporary world. It also shows how its short period means that it is disconnected from the broader ongoing work that is necessary. An academic expert, a prof at University of Greenwich, put it best when she raised concerns about the short-term symbolic gestures of the celebration. “The problem with adopting a symbolic stance”, she wrote, “is that it frequently results in that Black History Month becomes a transient display rather than a driver of transformation.”
Reevaluating, Not Abandoning
Establishing how to adjust, modify and expand efforts for equal rights and acknowledgment in such times of discouragement and concern is a treacherous thing. There is a inclination to just eliminate observances such as Black History Month altogether, assuming they are simply not fit for purpose, or are vestiges of an period that has been ineffective.
But despite everything, Black History Month, and in fact the whole broad system and legacy of racial movements – grassroots Black Lives Matter organisations, diversity equity and inclusion initiatives, and certainly, even commercial engagements – represent an foundation that a lot of work has gone into. It is there not just to decay as the political landscape shifts (and in fact, deteriorates), but to be a vital organism.
So what would a fresh vibrant Black History Month appear as? Firstly, it would be not just one concentrated month: something that is dispersed through the year (as various establishments are already beginning to do), parts of its content (particularly around notable African descendants) included in school curriculums. It would also be a time that does not evade governmental matters, and leaves space for people, particularly youth, to express their concerns and stories. What purpose serves basic knowledge of the past when it ignores the current situation of far-right rallies in the public spaces? Institutions who mark it should not be reassured with the non-confrontational words of hidden discrimination and awareness of minor insults, but challenged by the dangers that affect everyone if fight against prejudice is not treated with importance. In short, Black History Month should be made current, critical, and responsive. Perhaps an total re-identification is necessary – Contemporary Black History Month.
