Educators agree celebration is necessary

The celebration of Black History Month is owed to Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who in 1926 founded "Negro History Week." An African American born of parents who were former slaves, he labored his childhood years in the Kentucky coal mines. \nThe development of civil rights in the 20th century helped black history seep into the mainstream of American history. However, black author Mairuth Sarsfield recently said about Black History Month in the Toronto Star, "Someday we won't need it, because everyone will have the information." \nFive Monroe County educators, who teach on all academic levels, are skeptical of Sarsfield's claim. Whether to redress historical wrongs, prevent recidivistic ignorance, integrate black history fully into American history, clear up the misconceptions of whites or provide a different history to those without uniform access to it, these five educators agree on one thing: Black History Month is far from obsolete. \nDave Smith, a sixth grade teacher at Fairview Elementary, grew up in Bloomington without the same exposure to black history that the kids in his class enjoy.\n"There's a lot more recognition of Black History Month today than I had back in school, which was a long, long time ago," Smith said through the syncopation of his laugh. "To be honest with you, we didn't even really acknowledge it back then."\nSmith, whose class is half minority students, said he doesn't "want the kids to grow up seeing each other as black and white." He said the complete integration of black history into American history would be impossible for his generation. But the future holds the possibility.\n"I don't think it will ever get to the point where we don't need to push it in certain areas," Smith said. "At least not in my lifetime. But if there's any hope for that, it's with the younger generation. Yeah, someday. But it would have to be like when they tried to incorporate the metric system.\n"Just have to wait until everyone who learned the old way dies out." \nPat Wilson is the department chair of social studies at Bloomington High School North. She has been teaching in Monroe County for 29 years. She believes the poverty of black history stories manifests itself in contemporary textbooks.\n"If you look at American history books, there is an overwhelming invisibility of both racism and anti-racism," she said. "And the thing is, K through 12 textbooks are the most dominant source of knowledge to young students."\nShe said at IU particularly, many students come from homogeneous backgrounds. These students are products of the racially remiss textbooks, and although they may not have racist thoughts, they still may have no understanding of racism. Wilson believes these problems exist all across America, and hence, she refuses to subscribe to Sarsfield's idea.\n"I'm just not optimistic about saying we can ever do away with (Black History Month)," she said. "We still have so many unresolved social issues with human rights."\nKenn Washington is a law student at IU and the program assistant at the African American Cultural Center. Washington acknowledges the progress made since his high school days but thinks there's more to be learned before Black History Month can be considered an antiquated promotional device. \n"It's been a few years since I've been in high school," Washington said. "But from what I remember, Black History was limited to Martin Luther King Jr. and very little talk about slavery. I think strides have been made, but there's a long way to go."\nWashington said the month doesn't serve to redress historical wrongs. Rather, the month can more appropriately serve to clear up misconceptions held by non-minorities.\n"I don't think the month itself is intended to say, 'Look what someone did to us,'" he said. "It's more to educate people that we're not exactly what the media has portrayed us as. You can't limit your thinking of us to just sports and hip-hop. And I'm sure there's white students who feel intimidated because it's not what they've grown up listening to.\n"Some people don't want to get over what they've known their whole lives. They're just not comfortable with it. But I had no choice about learning European history from a white male perspective. I had no choice but to feel comfortable with it."\nClaude Clegg, professor of history, said black history is important enough to warrant the annual reminder, in the same way that July 4 or Thanksgiving remind people of other defining moments in American history. He also thinks Black History Month invites the interests of people who aren't normally within the environs of black history.\n"There are many people, especially school-aged kids," Clegg said, "who might not otherwise stop to think about the importance of black history or social conditions affecting the quality of life of African-Americans without the intense attention that Black History Month brings to these topics."\nClegg said he's hesitant to say the month with will someday serve no purpose under Sarsfield's notion of obsolescence. He said the availability of information on black history doesn't make people "automatically knowledgeable of it or give them ready access to it."\nJames H. Madison is a professor of history at IU. He also serves as a trustee of the Indiana Historical Society. In his book "A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America," Madison tells a story of two young black men who were dragged from their Indiana prison cells, beaten and hanged by a Grant County mob in 1930. Although the book reveals a positive afterglow in the individuals who stood up against the lynchings, Madison said it is important to recognize that not all history stories are heartening. \n"We all want progress and happy stories," Madison said. "We all want to find comfort in American history -- in all forms of history. However, history is filled with discomforts, too, and we do a great disservice by not challenging ourselves with uncomfortable aspects of it.\n"And I think it's childish to do so, to want to think of ourselves and our history in that way."\nMadison said Black History Month, then, serves both to warn against a racially dichotomized society and to redress the neglect of black studies.\n"We are compensating for inadequate attention to African Americans," Madison said. "Inadequate in several ways. We need an African-American history that is integrated into American history so that we don't think of it as African-American history. We have a tendency to think of history and African-American history as different.\n"There are differences, of course, but we need a history that includes an African-American history that ties a more seamless thread into the fabrics of American history"