I feel as though the legacy of Black History Month has faltered not only among people (generally speaking) but also among blacks.
Have we forgotten about our TRUE founding fathers? I'm not talking about George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. I'm talking about MY founding fathers and my brothers' and sisters' founding fathers.
I'm talking about Angela Davis, who was jailed on behalf of trying to help her people get equal rights and social justice. I'm talking about Stockley Carmichel, the freedom riders, and Malcolm X.
I'm talking about the slaves of my ancestors who came on boats to Latin America, the Caribbean, and America, and were raped, abused, and worked to death by their slave masters.
All the while, they were toiling and praying through their daily lives for a change to come. I'm talking about the Black Patriots of the American Revolution. For Christ's sake, Crispus Attucks, a black man, was literally the first person killed in the Boston Massacre, which basically set off the Revolutionary War. A slave literally rowed Washington across the Delaware River. Yeah, you know which river I'm talking about — the one in that famous painting:
I'm talking about MY founding fathers, who inspired me to be my ancestor's wildest dreams.
I remember there was a time, shortly after Barack Obama was elected president, that people just stopped caring about Black History Month. Schools stopped putting up posters, libraries stopped putting up books about black issues by black authors, channels stopped airing black history documentaries. It was very interesting. It was almost as if white America was saying, "hey, y'all got a black man in office now, so racism is over. You don't need to learn about that."
When in fact, we do.
I remember my mom used to ask my sister and I, year after year, "What are your schools doing for black history month?" We would look at each other and say, "nothing."
That word — nothing is what sparks a whole generation of people to do something. When the government is doing NOTHING to help our communities, people start acting. When law enforcement is doing NOTHING but stopping, frisking, and shooting our young black men, people start acting. When white people with high privilege and power say NOTHING when something happens in the black community, though they have close ties to it (I'm looking at you, Kim Kardashian), people start acting.
I feel as though many have forgotten the plights our ancestors went through because it was a long time ago. I hate when people say, "Slavery was so long ago, why do people still bring it up?"
Why?
Maybe because the implications of slavery are still evident today in our broken homes, our "ghetto-fied" neighborhoods, and in the faces of our jaded children, who feel like they can't become anything important because of their circumstances.
I'm so thankful for my club, United Black Council, for constantly pushing all of the Rutgers' black clubs together and trying to unite them. Because black power just isn't about African-Americans. It's about afro-Hispanics, Africans, Caribbeans, people mixed with black, etc. We have so many different black related clubs here, and it's so important that black people (even outside of Rutgers) are unified because we can't fight the good fight alone.
This Black History Month, I feel like we should do more to spread awareness to the issues that are plaguing our society, come together to try to resolve them, and also celebrate what it means to be a black individual in society. We've come so far as a people, and I think we can go further.
But this celebration of our black-ness and our promise to serve our communities shouldn't be limited to only BHM. Let's make it a routine part of our lives. Just like how we tune in every week to watch our favorite show or routinely get physical examinations done, we should also implement that into our daily lives.
Because after all, we really are our ancestors' wildest dreams. Let's give them something more to be proud about.