Black History Month: Fueling our future with the pride of our true past

 Increasingly more countries are dedicating a month each year to the recognition of Black history, achievements, and contributions to human development. How can we best use this month, and what can we do to ensure that we achieve social justice, in health and across society at large?

The idea of Black History Month was born out of Carter G. Woodson’s Negro History Week, launched in 1926 in an attempt to challenge the underrepresentation of Black people in United States history.

It wasn’t until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s that this weeklong celebration was transformed into a month. The United Kingdom followed suit, recognizing and celebrating Black History Month for the first time in 1987.

Other parts of the world should do the same, even if the celebrations would involve diverse reflections, expressions, and events across countries.

Channels for white supremacy 

In Africa, for instance, this celebration of our Black history is crucial, given that our world’s history has been extensively whitewashed to confirm the theory of Western supremacy and provide the rationale for colonization and imperialism.

For instance, many denied the African origins of Egypt’s great civilization, despite the Greek’s unanimous declaration of this fact and their description of Egyptians as people with black skin and curly black hair. It was impossible for the world to believe that Black people could be responsible for one of the oldest, most sophisticated civilizations on Earth.

For political and economic reasons, white supremacists of the time made pharaohs whiter, ignored, looted, or systematically destroyed artifacts all over Africa, and distorted archaeological and historical findings in scientific reports and debates.

This was done in an attempt to cultivate a justification and their moral rights as white supremacists to ultimately enrich themselves — by enslaving and using Black people as commercial products and by stealing their riches.

However, one need not look further than the formal and informal educational systems feeding our children to observe the biased narrative and negative perception of Black people worldwide.

Children from the first drop of milk are taught that black is the color associated with negative actions and phenomena through stories and books that paint their understanding of society. For instance, villains in animated movies are often Black or Brown, while the majority of Disney princesses are white, thereby suggesting that Black is evil and white is ideal. Moreover, children’s books such as The Secret Garden contain outright racism against Black people.

The systematic inclusion of such books in curricula and the mass distribution of such movies create negative perceptions of Black people and foster low self-esteem among Black children.

In addition to books and films, languages often perpetuate and reflect racial biases.Take, for example, the difference between the terms “slaves” and “enslaved people.” The former simply admits an individual’s identity as a slave, while the latter puts the blame on the system that enslaved them.

Further emphasizing the impact of language on our beliefs, George Orwell in 1946 said, “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” These ingrained racist thoughts and beliefs are evident in the photographic series Let’s Talk about Race, published in the May 2017 issue of O Magazine.

This series challenges the stereotypes surrounding the roles that different races play in society by presenting pictures with the subjects taking on reversed traditional roles.

The shock and debate that followed these images on social media is clear evidence that we have been conditioned to accept these racial stereotypes.

 Source: Medical News Today