{"article":{"id":149404,"heading":"African-American history is American history","author":"Abe Appel","created":"2006-03-07 20:19:21","modified":"2013-11-11 00:38:38","last_modified":"Mon, 11 Nov 2013 07:38:38","article":"

Abe Appel\r\n Communications major\r\n It is disappointing watching another Black History \r\nMonth end while still being ignored and downplayed \r\nin the greater Euro-American culture.\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n It is troubling watching another Black History Month \r\nend with most colleges, newspapers, government \r\nfigures and civilians ignoring African-American history \r\nmonth, or relegating it down to something ethnically \r\nisolated. \r\n\r\n\r\n Again we choose isolation between histories, \r\ninstead of making Black History Month a time to truly \r\nlook at history. Again we refused to take this time to \r\nlook at who was America, in order to find out who is \r\nAmerica, in order to find out who America will be.\r\n\r\n\r\n By ignoring Black history we ignore American \r\nhistory itself. Black history is as much the history of \r\nEuro-America as it is the history of African-America’s \r\nstruggle to free, structure, define and create itself in \r\nthe American Diaspora. \r\n\r\n\r\n Black History Month is a mirror in which we are \r\nrefusing to look. We don’t want to see the slave \r\ntriangle, we don’t want to see slave masters, we don’t \r\nwant to see Jim Crow and lynchings running through\r\n our veins, we don’t want to see Malcolm X as a hero, \r\nblack panthers as American revolutionaries or Cornel \r\nWest as one of the leading intellectuals. We don’t \r\neven want to see people like John Brown and the \r\nabolitionist doing anything necessary to end slavery \r\nas something absolutely positive. \r\n\r\n\r\n So we have decided instead to hide our heads in \r\nthe sand believing that if we don’t see it, its not there. \r\nBut it is there whether you look or not.\r\n\r\n\r\n By us ignoring African-American history we \r\ncontinue to ignore African-American present. In so \r\ndoing we continue to either approve of, or perpetuate \r\nthrough our ignorance’s the divisions, pains, and \r\nHistoric racism that is still creating apartheid in \r\nAmerican schools, prisons, roads, housing, \r\neducation, economics, entertainment, national, \r\ninternational and personal relationships.\r\n\r\n\r\n African-American history and black reality rests \r\nheavily on our collective and individual souls. We \r\nnever healed. The wounds are still open. Companies\r\n and this very government became rich through slave \r\nlabor and today sit in plush towers and leather chairs \r\nwith corporate accounts while African-Americans-for \r\nexample-in Harlem fight to not get arrested, so they \r\ncan somehow get pass pre-conceived perceptions of \r\nthem and get into college and then after graduation \r\nfight again to work at, let alone own, the companies in\r\n Manhattan. \r\n\r\n\r\n And still just like in the days of slavery we really \r\nappreciate African- Americans who sing or dance or \r\ncompete for us, but refuse to let them lead, teach and\r\n spiritually guide us.\r\n\r\n\r\n We never paid back the debt; and so we still are \r\nbuilding the debt. For instance Stanly Tookie Williams’\r\n execution (and the Governors disgustingly racist \r\ncritique of such beautiful people as Angela Davis and \r\nNelson Mandela in his decision to kill Tookie) is in \r\ndirect relation to the ignoring of African-American \r\nhistory, which is American history unrecognized and\r\n forced to the flipside.\r\n\r\n\r\n Diversity isn’t all of us learning different histories.\r\n True diversity is all of our perspectives through \r\nhistory coming together equally to create “the History \r\nof us”. \r\n\r\n\r\n As each event this month that recognized and \r\ntaught African-American history went unattended, \r\nuncovered, and untaught it formed a magnification\r\n within our smaller school culture of our national \r\nculture. And until history itself can be healed into one\r\n scar, the wound will remain open. And any talk of \r\ndiversity will represent the watering down of “respect” \r\nto create an annoyance that we’ll hide within the word “tolerance”.\r\n\r\n\r\n American history can not be known as long as we \r\nhave African-American history relegated into separate but equal times and places as something “for them” \r\nbut not us. They are we, we are they. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n<\/p>\n","contact":"abe_appel@yahoo.com","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"African-American history month was ignored and glanced over. But African-American history is American history","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2006\/03\/149404.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}