Continuing on with Black History Month, as we look back over the years and see who was "The First" at something in history, they get a lot a credit. As they should but one would notice that there is a difference between when a white American would be the first and a black American would be the first. The main difference is, they get celebrated differently. In the black community, when you are the first at something: you would get people to sing/rap about you, when you pass away you would get a statue made in your honor, and for some people, they would get a school or a street named after them. But for the white community, they would remind people what happened in their life, but sometimes it's negative.
Let's start with the black community, they have many notable black people who were the first at something positive. But around the time it would negative. Let's look at Rosa Parks as an example: She was the first to not give up her seat to a white person while on the bus. Around that time that was a bad thing because whites were extremely superior to blacks. So if a black person wasn't sitting in the back of the bus, they would get kicked off the bus and even worse thrown into jail. One could also think about the raised fist. Although blacks were not the first to start using it, blacks did make it very popular in the 1970s. The Black Panther Party really started to make it known because it's a sign of unity. But the crazy thing is, some whites didn't like it because they felt like it was threatening. The reason being is because whenever blacks come together and raise their fist, that meant that they were protesting whatever it was that was going to hurt the black community. Lastly, let's look at President Obama. Some whites did not want him in office because he is black, but the thing is when Bush got out of office Obama had to clean up all of his mess. Obama was an amazing President but most people couldn't see that because the first thing they saw was the color of his skin. He killed Osama Bin Laden, he gave health insurance to the many Americans who didn't have it, and he made jobs for the many people who were unemployed.
As for the white community, the first person I can think of was President Lincoln, he was the first president to be assassinated. Very rarely does the school system talk about what he's done in office, they jump straight to his assassination. That's the same with president John F. Kennedy. The school system never talked about what he did for the blacks, they jumped straight to his assassination. But I will say this, although I've been talking about Presidents for the white community, they do have one man who has been pretty positive, Neil Armstrong. He was the first man to ever step foot on the moon, but that was with the help of the black women who was working in NASA.
Everybody is celebrated differently in their culture. Some people have to be reminded of what they did wrong rather than what they did for their people.
