It is a given that we should lament the fact we rely on a calendar designation for “Black History Month.”
Do we have a White History Month?
Why do we not simply have an American History Month?
What is most lamentable is that we are still not a culture inclusive enough to see ourselves as the president has intoned: not a white America, not a black America, but a United States of America.
Until that time, we continue to make the most of what we do have: February — our Black History Month, celebrated since 1976 each February to commemorate the accomplishments of black Americans throughout history.
Over the ensuing nearly 40 years, there has been a good bit of progress, according to Pew Research Center.
* High school dropout rates have declined faster among blacks than the national average — from 24 percent in 1976 to 8 percent in 2013. At the same time, the share of blacks graduating from college has increased faster than national average, from 7 percent to 22 percent.
* In the last presidential election, black voter turnout rate (66.6 percent) exceeded that of whites (64.1 percent) for the first time.
But there are gaps.
* The poverty rate among blacks is the highest of any racial or ethnic group, but it has declined slightly over time, from 31.3 percent in 1976 to 27.2 percent in 2014, according to census data — even while the overall U.S. poverty rate has increased from 12.3 percent to 14.9 percent
* The 2013 median wealth of white households ($141,900) was 13 times the median wealth of black households ($11,000). Sadly, that is the widest gap since 1989, according to a Pew Research analysis of Federal Reserve survey data.
According to a Washington Post poll, Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, far overshadows others as the nation’s most important black leader. Two-thirds of blacks said Obama tops that list, while 7 percent named Martin Luther King Jr. and 16 percent had no opinion. Jesse Jackson had been the top choice in previous decades. Also on the list were Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell.
Looking to the future, blacks are far more likely than whites to say more must be done to achieve racial equality in America. Just under 80 percent of blacks said so, compared to just 44 percent of whites.
Perhaps black history is a place to start making that inclusiveness and equality begin, because black history, like white history, is American history. And it is high time that we treat it that way.
As President Obama has said:
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. … I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
— Martin Luther King
“No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”
— Booker T. Washington
“If you only think of me during Black History Month, I must be failing as an educator and as an astrophysicist.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
“The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.”
— Henry Louis Gates
“Laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color.”
— Unknown
“One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.”
— Franklin Thomas
“The African race is a rubber ball. The harder you dash it to the ground, the higher it will rise.”
— African proverb
“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”
— Maya Angelou
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
— Frederick Douglass
“Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.”
— Coretta Scott King
“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
— W.E.B. Du Bois
“We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.”
— Carter Woodson
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”
— Harriet Tubman
“Black people have always been America’s wilderness in search of a promised land.”
— Cornel West
“The United States has been called the melting pot of the world. But it seems to me that the colored man either missed getting into the pot or he got melted down.”
— U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall
“Racial superiority is a mere pigment of the imagination.”
— Unknown
“I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up.”
— Rosa Parks
“In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”
— Toni Morrison
“Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.”
— Oprah Winfrey
Quotes compiled by the International Business Times