Quote:
Originally Posted by King of Queens
(Post 11838111)
I wonder why they dont have white history month
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Why can't we have White History Month?
There is a petition being circulated on the Web that is addressed to ?All Whites.? It has been signed by thousands of people, and reads in part: ?We believe that if African Americans and now Hispanics can have their history month for their heritage, why can?t the White Americans have White history month? Wake up Americans before we become extinct! Please, sign my petition so that we can also have our White history month.?
This is an issue that surfaces every February, like clockwork, when Black History Month rolls around. I have the answer to the question: it is, quite simply, because every month is White History Month.
When scholar Carter G. Woodson created what was then called Negro History Week in 1926, he hoped for the day when it no longer would be needed, when the contributions of people from various races, ethnicities and even genders would be taught fairly and properly. Woodson believed that Negro History Week would accomplish two things: build self-esteem among blacks and help eliminate prejudice among whites.
It was needed. As professor Yaw Boateng of Eastern Washington University reminds us, ?between 1619 and 1926, African Americans and other peoples of African descent were classified as a race that had not made any contribution to human civilization; they were continually dehumanized and relegated to the position of non-citizens and often defined as fractions of humans. It is estimated that between 1890 and 1925, an African American was lynched every two and a half days. Peoples of African descent were visibly absent in any scholarship or intellectual discourse that dealt with human civilization.? This was the world in which Woodson lived.
But Woodson?s dream that Negro History Week would no longer be needed still isn?t a reality, nearly 80 years later. He dreamed of a day when every student's education would include such African-American figures as Crispus Attucks, who died in the Boston Massacre; Dr. Daniel Williams, who performed the world?s first open-heart surgery; Matthew A. Henson, who co-discovered the North Pole with Robert Peary, and Benjamin Banneker, the pioneer scientist who helped conduct the first survey of Washington. If you?re like me, those names weren?t mentioned in your history classes, and still aren?t today.
After the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Black History Week was expanded into Black History month. I?ve heard people joke that February was chosen because it?s the shortest month. Cute. But no, that?s not the reason. It was chosen in part because the birthdays of slave abolitionists Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, as well as poet Langston Hughes and musician Eubie Blake, are in February. It?s also the month the NAACP was founded (in 1909) and the month that its co-founder, W.E.B. Dubois, was born (in 1868). On February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment granting blacks the right to vote was passed. February 25, 1870, the first black U.S. senator, Hiram Revels, took his oath of office. It was on February 1, 1960, that a group of black Greensboro, N.C., college students began a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. February is an important month in Black history, though few of us in the White community know it. The intention of Black History Month was not to confine our study of Black history to those 28 days of February. Rather, Black History Month must be the climax of a study of the Black experience throughout the year.
So back to the question of the petitioners: why is there no White History Month? In the words of a Tulane University Black History Month website, a ?White History Month is not needed because the contributions of whites are already acknowledged by society.? In other words, American history is white history, plain and simple. And as Thomas Sowell has written, ?You cannot understand even your own history if that is the only history you know.?
Being white in the United States means that when my daughters attend school, the curricular materials they receive reflect the color of their skin; the same is not true for my African-American friends and colleagues. When my children hear about their national heritage or about ?civilization,? they are shown that people of their color made it what it is; again, not so for the children of my African-American friends. Scholar Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley Colllege Center for Research on Women, listed these and other realities of what it means to be white in this country - simply conditions of daily experience which, as a white person, she once took for granted. Not only do ?flesh? colored bandages match her skin color, she noted, but when she turns on the television or looks at the front page of the paper, she can see people of her race widely represented?and not just as criminals or sports figures. The same is not true for African-Americans.
Last year, the Long Beach Grunion announced that January 2004 would be the first annual ?White History Month.? They reported that White History Month festivities would include mass viewings of the latest Pixar and Disney brand films, the NBC?s Frasier farewell season, wine-tastings, and free Jet Blue travel. ?White Americans,? they reported, ?are in a celebratory mood, eagerly anticipating their first month where they can finally pay respect to their culturally rich traditions and the lifetimes of all the white people who have made the world a better place to be white in.? It was written as satire, but truer words may never have been spoken than those last seven: a better place to be white in.
Let me change my answer to the opening question: we don?t need a White History Month - not because every month is White History Month, but because every year is White History Year. In fact, a colleague of mine put it even more aptly: ?it?s even more than White History Year?it?s White History Life ? just look at the names of bridges, mountain ranges, parks, universities, colleges, streets, cities, management styles and philosophies, pictures on money, constellations, the color of Santa Claus...?
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