I know it isn’t February but bear with me. I came across this tweet yesterday.
I then retweeted it.
My tweet speaks for itself, but I still felt like elaborating. Black History Month is an easy target for the naive colour-blind racists and the more outspoken white supremacists. “Why don’t we have white history month. See, black history month is real racism.”
There is no month officially labelled, “White History Month.” Those months are just called January, March April etc. Katherine Johnson provides a microcosm of this. She was pivotal to early space exploration missions, yet I never learned about her in school. If it wasn’t for Hidden Figures and this tweet, I would have no idea who she is. Of course, I know who Neil Armstrong is. I know who Buzz Aldrin is. Johnson is just as important in terms of her impact, arguably even more so since the missions she worked on paved the way for Armstrong.
When a statue of a racist historical figure is taken down, people are quick to complain about “erasing history.” Johnson is a real victim of erased history. For every hundred people that know who Neil Armstrong is, I bet only one knows Katherine Johnson. The numbers might be skewed now, thanks to Hidden Figures. That is an issue though. If school will not give equal weight to historical figures, regardless of their colour, then it appears black history month will continue to be necessary.
Have you heard of Thomas Edison? Of course. Have you heard of Lewis Latimer, the black man who helped to create a more efficient process for manufacturing filaments for lightbulbs? You probably haven’t, and I wouldn’t know about Latimer if it wasn’t for a black history panel at the New York Public Library. While the black history exhibit panel interested me, it seemed like all the white people around me skipped that panel once they saw the subject matter.
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