Harriet Tubman is an important part of black history, but her struggle shouldn't be the starting point for enlightening our children.
In our house, Black History Month is a big deal each February.
My wife, Rai, is an award-winning elementary school teacher and has been an educator for the past 15 years. My undergraduate degree is in African American Studies and history is my true passion. We have five kids of our own from pre-school to high school.
So we've always taken it upon ourselves to teach our kids their history 12 months a year, but Black History Month is special for us and should be special for students all across the country.
Which is why I'm slightly irritated that it got the shortest month of the year — but at least 2016 is a leap year so we get 29 days to get right this time around!
The biggest problem that my wife and I have with Black History Month (and black history in general) is that, far too often, it begins with American slavery.
At least 70,000 years ago, deep in South Africa, traces of modern men and women have been found. In 2002, in the Blombos caves of South Africa, the earliest abstract art was discovered and believed to be from that period — the earliest art ever found. In Africa, traces of migration routes, art and civilization take us all the way through the Nubian kingdoms that began 7,000 years ago. During that time, not hundreds, or thousands, but millions of Africans lived and died before the idea of the trans-Atlantic slave trade would come into being.
Thousands of years before American slavery, African kingdoms like the Axum Empire ruled. Other rich civilizations like the Ghana or Songhai empires have so much to tell that they alone could fill Black History Month.
Nearly 300 years before American slavery, Mana Musa, who ruled in what would be modern day West Africa, was the richest man alive. Adjusted for inflation, his wealth is estimated to have been more than $400 billion — which would make him the richest man to have ever lived. Of course, this means he oversaw a complex economy with a rich culture — all overlooked in most basic retellings of black history.
In the 1500s, Leo Africanus wrote of Timbuktu that its king "hath always 3,000 horsemen ... (and) a great store of doctors, judges, priests and other learned men, that are bountifully maintained at the king's cost and charges.”
Yes, Harriet Tubman is heroic and deserves to be highlighted, but the history of black people did not begin with her courageous efforts on the underground railroad in 1850. Africans had already been in the United States for 231 years by the time she began her efforts. Beyond that,the 246 years of American slavery represent less than 1% of known black history from around the world.
That's the historical beef I have, but the problem with starting Black History Month off with slavery goes much deeper than that. It is a formative, emotional, psychological mistake to introduce the history of black people with them as subjugated, enslaved peoples. Yes, it's simply inaccurate, but it actually does damage — not just to young black children, but to all children, when they are given the distinct impression that black people began as inferior subjects and somehow found their way out.
The earliest white people that young students of all races learn about are world travelers, inventors, and American presidents like Christopher Columbus, Ben Franklin, and George Washington. From there students are likely to learn about Michelangelo, Mozart, or Galileo. They may learn about Abe Lincoln or Lewis and Clark, but (white) history never begins or ends with horror or pain.
Of course, the trans-Atlantic slave trade is an important piece in the total history of the African Diaspora, but starting it off there strikes me as a suspicious form of white supremacy. When young white students first see that historical heroes who look like them were the glorious leaders of the world and that the first black people they learn about were owned like property and lived as mindless slaves picking cotton, what impact do you think that has on their worldview?
In our house, and in my wife's classroom, we've taken two different approaches to Black History Month. We have started Black History Month off in pre-historic South Africa or in early African Kingdoms to show the true depth and breadth and beauty of blackness or we start off in present day and work ourselves backwards, introducing children first to healthy, relevant, modern examples of black leaders before we move through slavery then back to Africa.
Either way, Black History Month must never begin or end with slavery.
King: Black History Month should never begin with slavery
been saying this for years
