Rant on.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I am not a racist.\u00a0 I wanted to start out by saying that because I want to make it clear I don’t have anything against anyone based on skin color, religion, sexual preference or anything else similarly superficial.\u00a0 However, I think Black History Month, of which today is the last day, is a bad idea.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Don’t get me wrong.\u00a0 There are plenty of “people of color” whose lives are worth celebrating.\u00a0 There are aspects of American history worth remembering in the fight for civil rights, a fight which goes on today.\u00a0 However, the concept of a month dedicated to such things is, well, it’s racist.\u00a0 Think about the phrase and change the word “black” to “white.”\u00a0 Suddenly, it sounds<\/em> racist, and anybody promoting a “White History Month” would certainly be labeled a bigot.\u00a0 It should be no different for those who promote Black History Month.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I have a better idea.\u00a0 Let’s have an American History Month.\u00a0 Or maybe a Civil Rights Month.\u00a0 There are certainly many things, good and bad, one could focus on remembering for the former, and plenty of social actions one could take for the latter.\u00a0 In both cases people like Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks could be honored, as well as dozens or hundreds, maybe even thousands of others who drove the civil rights movement.\u00a0 Including, I think, some white folks who are quickly forgotten.\u00a0 I can’t name names, but I know the faith I belong to, Unitarian Universalism, worked to boost civil rights, and not just the darker-skinned members of it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Unitarian Universalism isn’t perfect, though.\u00a0 There was a Unitarian minister in the 1940’s who married interracially who couldn’t find a pulpit because of his marriage.\u00a0 The UUA General Assembly in 1969 erupted into a terrible fight over racial issues.\u00a0 But even these things can be made useful in an historical context.\u00a0 One need look no further than Ruby Bridges to see this.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ruby Bridges was the first black girl to attend a formerly all-white school in New Orleans in 1960.\u00a0 The amazing thing about Ruby is that she was only six at the time this happened.\u00a0 It was an ugly affair:\u00a0 She was accompanied by U.S. marshals and her mother on the first few days of school, and then by just the marshals for a long time.\u00a0 Her classroom was empty–everybody<\/em> pulled their child out of her class.\u00a0 And yet she went.\u00a0 She did not complain, did not ask to go to a different school, none of that.\u00a0 The crowds continued to harass her during her first year at the school, although they were smaller at the end of the year.\u00a0 At the beginning of the next year, the ugly crowds were gone and she had classmates.\u00a0 Life went on and slowly achieved a sense of normalcy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And this is my point:\u00a0 Life goes on.\u00a0 It’s important to look at the ugly things that happen so we can see the dark side of human nature.\u00a0 We look at it through the hero’s eyes, so we can also see a positive aspect, the courage of a six-year old girl who just wants an education.\u00a0 It doesn’t even matter whether Ruby was black or white, she was a young girl in a bad situation who braved her way through it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At the UUA General Assembly in 1969, things got so ugly that at one point a large number of attendees decided to walk out in protest.\u00a0 Most of them were black, but at least one fellow was white.\u00a0 And one of his good friends, a black man, spit on him for his decision to do so, as if it were strictly a privilege of those whose civil rights were being challenged.\u00a0 The point is that it is not<\/em> a right reserved to those being biased against.\u00a0 Whites can protest for the rights of non-whites, straight people for homosexuals, etc.\u00a0 In fact, this support should be welcomed, as it demonstrates people of differing natures can get along together.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is what this month should be about.\u00a0 Celebrating the people who fought for civil rights.\u00a0 This is what American history is all about, fighting for rights.\u00a0 The Boston Tea Party was staged as a protest against “taxation without representation.”\u00a0 The people were being taxed on tea, and the taxes were going to a government they did not have a voice in.\u00a0 Their rights were being trampled on, and they pushed back.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As a side note, this is something which irritates me about the Tea Partiers of today.\u00a0 They have taken the name to protest not trampled rights but the fact that the majority of the American people elected people they disagree with.\u00a0 Nobody’s rights were even lightly tread upon; due process of law in the form of an election was followed and people had their say.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I won’t sidetrack further on that because my point here is Black History Month is not what it should be.\u00a0 Let’s not celebrate one group of Americans who have had their rights and even their very humanity questioned in our history.\u00a0 There are several groups that could apply to–native Americans, Asians, women and homosexuals just to name the most prominent groups–and none of them have a month.\u00a0 There’s nothing about being black which stands out as being worthy of celebrating for an entire month.\u00a0 Yes, it’s important to be aware of one’s culture and ancestors and history, but not to the exclusion of the cultures and history of those around you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I am hopeful someday this country and in fact this world will not see race as being of significance.\u00a0 As Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”\u00a0 Now that would be a history worth celebrating.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rant off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rant on. I am not a racist.\u00a0 I wanted to start out by saying that because I want to make it clear I don’t have anything against anyone based on skin color, religion, sexual preference or anything else similarly superficial.\u00a0 However, I think Black History Month, of which today is the last day, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":383,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions\/383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}