history with an asterisk
by J.C Phillips
Each year during the month of February, Americans gather together to celebrate the significant contributions Black people have made to this nation. We call it Black history month or the now more politically correct: National African American History Month. The idea is a noble one. For far too long, Black contributions to our national culture were marginalized. The Black presence in the American narrative was all but absent. As the great Flip Wilson observed: “Why should they invite us to the party when we’re doin’ all the cooking?” But if pushing Black folk to the margins by ignoring our contributions made us second class citizens in the past, keeping us on the margins as a way to celebrate our contributions is to continue to see being a Black American as being an American with an asterisk.
One of the rationales for the creation of a Black history month was the correct observation that the continued presence of that asterisk separated Black people from an American history and American cultural values that we had earned through sweat equity. Alas, that asterisk also opens the door to the influence of ideas and philosophies that are counter productive to continued American success and Black success in America.
The civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s was victorious because the demands of the movement were based on the theory of natural rights and the duty of government to defend those rights regardless of race. Following those victories, the movement was infected by Marxist thought, which moved from demanding the protection of equal rights for individuals to the extension of community rights; away from the celebration of individual initiative and character to the politics of group identity and the deconstruction of American institutions, which were to be replaced by the administrative state. Many of these theories were embraced because, well, simply put, there was no need to bleed for the preservation of those better ideals that were only ours as an after thought.
Black History month continues to perpetuate the idea that somehow we (American Blacks) were “in it but not of it.” The opposite is actually true. One cannot discuss American liberty, equality and the natural rights of all men without discussing the history of Black people in this country. It was the presence of Africans in America that forced Americas founding principles to become more than just lofty rhetoric. The concept of an inalienable right to life, liberty and private property was made tangible in the dark faces of 4 million African slaves. The ideal of one nation under God as opposed to a loose knit union of autonomous states and the completion of the founding in the manner of the civil rights amendments to the constitution was realized following a war for liberation and equality. The laws that put teeth into constitutional guarantees followed images of Black men and women whose struggle to make real the principles of the founding was greeted with attack dogs and fire hoses. The journey of this American republic cannot be separated from the journey of African peoples. The values of Black America are akin to the values of this great land and just as importantly Black success in America is inextricably tied to those same values and not the snake oil sold by hucksters that sneak in through the open door of history-as-a-footnote.
The spirit of Black History month is spot on in it’s insistence that the contributions of Black Americans be recognized and celebrated as indeed the contributions of all the disparate peoples that compose America should be. However, rather than adding Black history as a postscript, the saga of America should be rewritten to include that history. Teaching it as an addendum, as we do each February, is to distort our nation’s history, rob it of much of its richness and perpetuate the notion that being Black in America is to be a hybrid American – present but not woven into the fabric.
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