There is no subject as deep and pained as the history of black Americans. I do not fully understand it because I am not oppressed in the sense that much of our population is, but rather I am a son of privilege and, as a young white man, an heir to the oppressor. In hopes of using my voice in solidarity, with the Americans my ancestors oppressed, I seek nothing but the acceptance from my fellow white Americans of the reality that African Americans are, in fact, American.

I can't give a full account of Black History because I am an onlooker, not an incremental person within such. I can, however, provide my understanding, gleaned from testimonies and stories from within Black History.

The first thing I have learned about black history is that it is a part of the larger American history, where other stories intertwine with each other. Black History started in pain, but it is also a testament to strength. "And one is, after all, emboldened by the spectacle of human history in general, and American Negro history in particular, for it testifies to nothing less than the perpetual achievement of the impossible," as James Baldwin stated in The Fire Next Time.

In school, as soon as February started, I heard of the invention of peanut butter by George Washington Carver (which is actually becoming debated), or that Rosa Parks didn't give up her seat on the bus, and that Ruby Bridges was the first young woman to attend an all-white school. I suspect in the future my children will learn a clouded version of President Obama's time in office during their schooling.

While all these are brilliant and progressive moments for America, it doesn't give a full account. Instead, only a light-hearted version of the portion of American history known as Black History. The reality is, histories of white Americans and black Americans go back to the conception of the United States. In a time where we were not threads weaving together to form a beautiful tapestry of integration (it would be bold and irrational to claim that we have a tapestry like this now), but a divided racial hierarchy, where white people brutally restricted the living conditions of the very people they forced into the land that white people conquered.

The change from slavery to citizenship was a bloody, brutal one. From the first slave sold in Virginia in 1619, to the right to vote in 1965, there were millions of deaths. Slave trade took the lives of millions of black people, along with the many lynchings. There isn't a full count of deaths for African Americans because so many were unaccounted for or forgotten to history.

In spite of this, black Americans persevered. People like Nat Turner, who rebelled against slave owners for many years, or Sojourner Truth, who fought racism and patriarchal society with her speeches across the country. There was an undeniable and "perpetual achievement of the impossible". For a group of people to go from being property and owning nothing, to being property owners and qualified citizens, that is what I believe to be the power of Black History. The act of pushing against white supremacy that would deny the humanity of black Americans is the most beautiful self-loving act in U.S history.

"White America has been historically weak-willed in ensuring racial justice and has continued to resist fully accepting the humanity of blacks," Dr. Cornel West wrote in Race Matters. This reality is interconnected with the strength of black Americans in their perseverance. If white America provided more compassion along the path to black citizenship, then the pain of thousands of black Americans would have been at least somewhat lessened. Instead of compassion, though, we see throughout history a trickle down hatred from those in power. Realizing that degradation of identity results in control, white government officials perpetuated the inhumanity of black Americans, and society as a whole took the bait.

Or, white America didn't choose to act. "The system is racist. So, in a way, it doesn’t matter if individuals are racist. But if the system is racist and white folks aren’t proactively anti-racist in their words and deeds, they still give weight and momentum to systemic racism," Mark van Steenwyk argues. White America's lethargy was a sin, but the result of this sin was the calloused hands and fiery hearts of black Americans. They persevered without the help of anyone.

Black History is a history of self-love against all odds. While a portion of our population was enslaved for the color of their skin, lynched for their pursuit of self-advancement, and taught to hate themselves and held down strictly for being perceptually different than those who were in power, they fought to love themselves and free themselves and show that they were just as American, and just as human as the people who enslaved them.

The idea that black Americans would fight for their own humanity: that is what I understand Black History to be.