Black History Matters

            I tried for three years to write this one blog entry.  No lie.  I have a version of it sitting in my file that still hasn’t been shown to the internet in any way.  Why? Because I am afraid of looking like a racist or a dummy.  (And they are often the same, really.)  It is very important to me that I express this view, but we are in a time of frayed nerves and I just don’t know how it will be received.  I can only be honest.  I can only speak what I believe to be true.

             I love black America.  Sincerely.

             My central point in my previous attempts was to say that what we know as black America and white America are inexorably linked. They are not one and the same, but each one is affected and influenced by the other.  I also believe that white America, as a whole, does not understand that.  My guess is that those die-hard racists believe that if African Americans never existed in this country, we would be doing just fine.  We would be the same without them.  That’s not only racist but uninformed and incorrect. The cultural impact is undeniable and overwhelming when it is examined closely.

             But that shit is boring to write about.  I may be one-hundred percent correct in this observation, but nobody gives a shit. Not really.  My blogs aren’t journalism or academic theories.  They are personal essays.  If I don’t have a stake that affects me, I don’t bother.

             I don’t have some pop-love for black music and fashion like a lot of suburban white kids.  You know those guys, the ones who look like Zac Efron and talk like Kendrick Lamar. It’s not just that, anyway.  I’ve had a love for history since I was little, and one of the many earth-shattering revelations that happened during my college education was that the entirety of black history in America has barely been researched or published.  Black America began in 1619 and we really don’t know shit.  Put it this way:  For every day since the Civil War, there has been one book written about that subject.  Seriously. Conversely, how much do we really know about Harriet Tubman or George Washington Carver, who are mentioned every February during Black History Month? You know the names, but you really don’t know jack about them at all.

             When I was considering a life as a historian, I wanted to take that route. A Ph.D. in Black History. It was not only a wide-open area of exploration, it was also fascinating to me that we have this unbelievably rich, terrible, and fascinating story of America, and there are glaring omissions that are so important to the whole. But kids need diapers, so I had to get jobs that actually paid money.

             When I was a kid, my hero was George Carlin.  I wanted to speak and write and do comedy.  His heroes were all the black kids who he grew up with in New York.  He wanted to be friends with them and talk like them and sing like them.  He made a wonderful observation about black America that rings true for a lot of us white people:  The people that have been traditionally the least free in our culture, are the freest with their bodies and their language.  Protestant white America is stiff, let’s face it. Reserved, restrained. There is something about the rhythms and tenor of our black friends and neighbors that a lot of us find appealing.  I guess the same goes for a lot of cultural subsets.  I’ve heard the same thing said about Italians, Greeks, Mexican, Eastern Europeans.  Black America is the foundation of what America finds cool.

             I longed to have the rhythm and self-confidence of Richard Pryor onstage.  I don’t know where that comes from; I don’t know what hole I have that needs to be filled and we’ll never know truly what Pryor’s confidence was really like.  But it was just…fucking cool. Just like at the origin of every American musical art form you’ll find a small set of black musicians.  I can’t speak for jazz, because I’m a blues guy, but the inherent pain and longing of blues-based anything is so central to the American experience I can’t imagine this country without it. You take the pain and suffering of a life and turn it into beauty.  Hip hop began the exact same way.  Reagan’s America had no jobs and no future, so another permutation of music developed on the streets as a reaction.  Not just to protest, but as a reminder that we still have to live through this shit, so let’s have a little fun while we do it.

             Here’s the part where I go wrong.  Here’s the part where I fuck it up because I try to summarize in a nice paragraph.  It’s how I write, so why would this piece be any different?  Because it is.  We all know where we are now.  Economically, educationally.  Police shootings.  White nationalists.  It’s wrong.  It’s unfair.  It’s also my white filter.  I would have to assume that this stuff is business as usual for black America.  It’s shocking to white people because it’s getting 24-hour news coverage.  I know.  I wish I had a damn solution.  I guess education is a solution.  More of it.  Also, it needs to be of a higher quality.  But that is easy to say.  It also takes a hell of a lot of time.

             Maybe, and this is a long shot, but maybe if everyone who felt like I do wrote about it.  Or spoke up.  Not to CNN or in front of Congress, but just…aloud.  Understand that we don’t have to establish bonds between us but recognize that they are already there.  We acknowledge that there are frightened racists out there and that there will always be some, but they are a fraction of us.  Talk about how much black America has impacted your life, made it better, made it more fun, made it more delicious. (Damn, I forgot to write about soul food.) You don’t have to mention MLK or Malcolm X or A. Philip Randolph. (Look him up.)  Talk about all your black teachers and doctors and that cool manager you had when you used to work at the video store.  Share your stories.  Or just talk about your friends or your girlfriend or your neighbor who didn’t complain when you played your Metallica too loud on the weekend.  That’s the everyday stuff.  Those are the things that matter.

             In an effort to come to some kind of conclusion: I really hate Black History Month. I understand why it was created, but its time has passed.  Black history is part of American history, whether all the stories have been told or not. The books need to be rewritten; not to delete but to include.  Our history is complex.  We can’t be afraid to tell the truth for fear of our traditional views changing.  It happened.  It’s time we deal with it. I don’t know the answers, but inclusion and recognition of millions of American lives in the story of America is a pretty good start.