Black History Month Ends; Black History Continues

February is set aside as Black History Month in the United States and it can be a great time for us to remember the importance of going back and checking what we learned and expand on that knowledge. Black history is American history, but it’s often left out or reframed when talked about on a broader scale.

“Chattel Slavery is not Black history… [it] is White history”

@nikkiblak

I’ve seen follow ups from the above quote and sentiment along the lines of “how we overcame it is Black history,” and I’ve also seen “It’s not so much Black History as it is history. We should emphasize… the Black person in history” (Carter G. Woodson). I’m learning how groundbreaking that is. Slavery was imposed by white people and upheld by white people and it’s on us to continue to dismantle the side effects that still remain.

I had to relearn a lot of history as I progressed through my education system. I hadn’t heard of the Children’s Crusade to fill jails in 1963 and I was led to believe Rosa Parks had just been stubborn one day rather than understanding the intentionality her “no” had. She had been part of the movement for years and it wasn’t until listening to Black leaders that I started to hear of Malcolm X or the Black Panthers.

Studying social movement theory in college was when I finally felt like the dots were connecting: the social fight takes longer than the legal fight. For example, we often celebrate the 13th amendment as the identifying marker for when the Black man had rights, but if you take into consideration penal farming, convict leasing, the Black Codes, and Jim Crow laws, the average Black American couldn’t even access their right to vote until about 100 years later.

We all watched Colin Kapernick take a knee and lose his job. We watched the national guard pull up on college students with BLM signs last summer. We also watched thousands storm the capitol with inside help and then be walked out, hand in hand with law enforcement, after violating one of our country’s most valued spaces. We need to acknowledge that living as a BIPOC in America is different than living as a white person in America. We all have felt the realities of race and it’s time to address it.

I know I’m beyond lucky to work for a powerful Black Womxn led organization. I’m beyond blessed they took me under their wing when I was a college sophomore who couldn’t even articulate the concept of systemic racism. They told me that as long as I was willing to learn, I was welcome in their space.

They’ve shared stories with me, I’ve been there when they’ve been racially profiled, and I’ve listened as they’ve filled me in on history I didn’t know. When George Floyd was killed I knew it hit me differently than it did them, and I was thankful we were able to have ongoing conversations about what was going on.

I was there when the third precinct burned and I didn’t make it back home every night there was curfew (I had been at a protest that got interrupted by a semi and it was pushed late and by the time I made it to a car my driver didn’t feel comfortable taking me back). I walked into crowds people were actively running away from because the KKK was there, passed groups of men walking nonchalantly through the city with assault rifles, consoled friends living in the neighborhoods where arson attempts were running rampant, helped them track which vehicles were circling their neighborhoods, and helped them find safe houses to stay in. Death threats from white supremacists were left near any BLM sign near the site of George Floyd’s death and circulated the internet quickly.

That was my experience, meanwhile, I had friends who were going about their normal days and knew none of this. They heard the helicopters, had to turn their cars down different roads because they ran into marches, but weren’t experiencing the same feelings of anxiety.

I actively put myself in those positions, but the neighborhoods that were directly impacted, where people didn’t have a choice of if they’d join in the protests or not because the protests were around their houses, were predominately BIPOC neighborhoods. Thanks to redlining, gentrification, and the delay of the fair housing act, I do attribute this to systemic racism.

So even in 2020/2021 we are seeing the difference in privilege in the White experience from the BIPOC experience.

This will be on the forefront of many of our minds in Minneapolis as we gear up for the trial of Derek Chauvin. The history of Minneapolis police officers being convicted is grim and the infamous case of previous officer Mohamed Noor being found guilty as a Black man with a Muslim name (after shooting a white person) has many furious because when the races are reversed, there’s rarely a conviction.

In the United States, you are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. George Floyd did not get a trial; he was accused but never convicted. Derek Chauvin was able to post bail while many BIPOC folks are currently incarcerated because they weren’t given bail or can’t afford it – and that’s also before they’ve been convicted.

We need to be willing to see that Black history is still currently in the making. As long as we continue living in our America and don’t question what it’s like to live with different identities here, we will continue to have drastically unequal experiences with deadly power dynamics.