Backlash—Black History Under Fire as Overt Racism Makes a Comeback

Last year The 1619 Project, a long-form journalism project developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine, came under attack.  The highly praised series and book re-examined the Black experience in the New World from the importation of African “indentured servants” to the Jamestown Colony in 1619.  It clearly showed that the generational experience of slavery continues to put African-Americans at a social and economic disadvantage and laid the blame for that on the development of an explicitly racist ideology that still lurks not far below the surface of polite white society.  Naturally the right wing propaganda machine when on a full-press attack on the series and on it’s authors.  Hannah-Jones was denied a tenured position at the University of North Carolina after the university’s board of trustees took the highly unusual step of failing to approve the Journalism Department’s recommendation under intense pressure and threats to withhold state funding for the school and a boycott by wealthy white donors.

Nikole Hannah-Jones found herself under attack for The 1619 Project.

Now Republican governors like newly elected Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and GOP controlled state legislators are rushing to ban the teaching of critical race theory after a campaign to stir up a social panic was whipped by Tucker Carlson and other Fox News propagandists and the right-wing echo chamber on social media.  Local school board meetings have been stormed and disrupted; teacher, administrators, and parents have been threatened and/or assaulted; captive library boards are banning books. 

This map of state actions against critical race theory was created before newly elected Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin issued his executive orders.

As one eight-year old observed in the related banning of the graphic novel Maus about the Holocaust, “The people who want to ban this are the ones who want to do it again.”

The roots of the annual Black History Month observance stretch back to 1926 when Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History announced the second week of February to be Negro History Week.  Woodson, who died in 1950, spent the rest of his life promoting historical awareness in both academia and the community.  There was plenty of resistance in the first case and the revelation of an untapped hunger in the second.

In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement and especially the Black Power movement of the 1970’s Black history finally began to take hold as a recognized academic discipline and as part of the curriculum in public and private schools.  The first Black History Month was celebrated at Kent State University in Ohio.  By 1976 President Gerald Ford recognized Black History Month, during the celebration of the United States Bicentennial.

Since then, Black History month has spread and now usually adopts a theme each year. This year the theme is Black Health and Wellness.

By the early 21st Century the media and many corporations seemed to have coopted the month in an attempt to pander to the Black community and inoculate themselves against charges of institutional racism.  Ubiquitous Black History Moments on television promoted hero worship of individual “pioneers” often without any context to a broader struggle or the experience of ordinary Black people.  It has also drawn criticism for “ghettoizing” Black history and confining it to a silo without connection to American history as a whole.  Actor and director Morgan Freeman declared “I don’t want a Black history month. Black history is American history.”

Fighting voter repression in the South during the Civil Rights Era and once again in America. 

I’m well aware of these pitfalls as a White writer, amateur historian, and hope-to-be ally.  Yet I think there is still much to be learned if Black History can be placed in its broadest context and include the struggles and sacrifices of the many as well as iconic figures.  That’s what Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout will try to do for the rest of the month.

We will be assembling a wide variety of posts from many years on this blog, updating them as necessary and adding new ones.  Feel free to respond with criticism, questions, and suggestions.