What is Black History?
When my dad came home from work, he would ask if my homework was done because he wanted to teach us what we weren’t learning in school. He talked to me and my brother about the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, African History, gender, Biology, mathematics, and so much more. He talked a lot about what Black families should be responsible for doing at home, and not rely on others to do this work for us. It was also interesting to me because neither of my parents were born in the US. Yet he focused his conversations of race to this country where systems permeate beyond borders.
In high school, I had the opportunity to take Black History courses and Black and Latinx teachers who provided space for me to explore texts outside of the mainstream curricula. As an undergraduate, I didn’t dive too much into Black History. I returned to it in graduate school studying Afro-American Studies at UCLA and African Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. In grad school at UChicago, I also focused on critical race theory in schooling. While I hesitate to say that I am in “expert” in anything, I am definitely well-exercised in the study of Blackness, Diaspora, and race-making.
At the very least, Blackness is normalized for me. I quite comfortably see the world through a lens of Black identity.
Which is why it is jarring when other people do not have this framing. And this is why it is important to say what Black History is and is not. It is not a list of facts and people and their accomplishments. It is not an annual celebration of legislation. In order to understand what Black History is we must first recognize that the modern world was founded and shaped by the kidnapping and forced labor of millions of Africans.
I want to be super careful and nuanced here. I am not getting into a debate about who owned whom, how many owned whom, or what the supposed trade-offs were. I am only saying that chattel slavery created a critical juncture in the timeline. And because the entire modern world, the entire timeline was shaped by this juncture, it does not matter who owned whom, how many owned whom, or what the supposed trade-offs were; everyone continues to interact with, navigate within, and maneuver in the structures that were put in place to support the centuries-long kidnapping and forced labor of millions of Africans.
When we take this point as a given, we see that looking at Black History through a series of individual and anomalous accomplishments undermines this point. Looking at the one person who invented something, or the one person who managed to overcome an incident, ignores the reason why that person is so extraordinary. These stories become more of an exercise in dismissing the weight of a system, and worse, reinforce calls to remedy the larger systemic problems that still exist.
So what is Black History? It is the study of how the modern world was created and shaped by enslavement.
