Victim-hood poker is being taken to the nth degree here.
I cringe every time February rolls around. For me, black history month has become predictable. First, it’s the arguments against it: “What about white history month?” Then up come the defenses: “How come black history month is the shortest month of the year?” Then, when we eventually get around to honoring the heroes and heroines of the hour, we dust off the biographies, documentaries, and frankly, Wikipedia entries, of the following: Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, and that guy who invented peanut butter. By the time it’s the end of the month, we’ve in fact forgotten what in fact we were meant to be celebrating and move on, confident that we’ve done our duty.
Yes, February is cringe-worthy for me. But the above reasons, although valid, aren’t why I recoil at the calendar. February is the month when everyone forgets that I’m black, too.
If you’re Afro-Latino, February isn’t the month for you because it simply doesn’t celebrate the diversity of your heritage. It doesn’t even try. If you’re Afro-Latino, you’re expected to lump your experience of being a person of African descent into the predictability of the month’s celebration.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, cry me a river. We shouldn’t have a black history month. There is history. That’s it. Special pleading because of skin colour is sickening and I am with Morgan Freeman on the matter. The whole thing is nothing more than hand-wringing, self loathing on the part of a certain type of leftist who is trying to guilt trip the rest of us. Well, I’m not guilty and don’t feel guilty and I’ll be damned if I’m going to celebrate black history month – so, yes, Icess Fernandez Rojas is on her own as far as I am concerned, because the very thought of a black Latino history month is taking absurdity beyond the event horizon.
That’s the problem with labelling people and putting them into nice neat little compartments each with their own victim qualification – they start queueing up with their list of grievances and special pleading. Whereas in reality we are all human. Unless you like being perpetually offended of course…
Not to be pedantic, but shouldn’t she be calling for Afro-Latina month as well then?
I find it increasingly difficult to beleive that people like this actually get column space.
Couldn’t we have a month for them called grievance month when they can all air their grievances together and the rest of us can go on government funded holidays, leaving the UK to them and them alone? Imagine it, the happy part of the country heads off to somewhere warm and sunny, and leaving the Guardian readers, Independent readers and Doreen Lawrence to enjoy each other’s company for a month.
So which month is ‘Arab history month’ then?
April, in the US. google etc. Admittedly it is a particular kind of history rather than the general sense of history-of-Arabs, but it fulfills the terms of your query. Y’all have a nice day now.
http://racerelations.about.com/od/DataAboutRacialMinorities/a/Celebrating-Arab-American-Heritage-Month.htm
Sssssh, Nisa! Don’t start giving them ideas!
In Zambia not one of the real Africans I know, with whom I worked and with whom I still correspond, has any knowledge whatsoever about this cretinous construct. “Black History”? The poverty-stricken Zambians are living black history right now, under a Government of the same colour, and their lives are very far from being pleasant.
When these Western-living “blacks” actually go and experience what the “Afro” bit that they choose to add to their nomenclature actually means then, and only then, will I take any notice of their bleats.
They have not got the foggiest idea what it means to be an African in Africa in the 21st Century.
As an emmigrant I suppose you cant have an ‘ white history’ month. Because they don’t exist what with all that diversity and ‘a nation of immigrants ‘ that I read about.
A bit odd that I had never seen anybody black in 1945 till the Americans arrived.
And in my class in Cardiff in 1948 there was one half caste out of thirty five whites. Though as I was English I was the diverse then- even though nobody had heard of it.
February is cringe-worthy for me too. It’s usually cold and miserable and often the time it snows. And when the winter gas bill arrives. Now The Guardian have found a way of achieving the seemingly-impossible and making it worse. Perhaps they’re trying to make up for the lack of snow?
It’s all so discriminatory anyway, why’s it always about humans? Why no National Stoat History Week? (I shouldn’t joke about it, they probably do have one).
Should those of us whiteys what has a birthday in February have it moved by government decree? Difficult to show the appropraiate level of respect and decorum (as deemed by lefties) when one is celebrating one’s birth (which, by definition, as a white male, is a blight on the planet).
I agree with you 100% hand wringing self loathing is exactly what it’s all about and I don’t feel guilty either, why should I.
Every race has something to gripe about, it’s always interested me to see which ones wring their hands and wail the loudest.
At the end of the day it’s all history, which means it’s the past, which is where all this bull belongs.
We all keep getting told “move on” so how come the very people who proffer this advice are incapable of following their own advice.
It won’t be long before every month is a something history month. Blagh pass me the sick bag.
When are we have Ginger history month. I think I can find enough to fill a whole month
One aspect that gets forgotten in all of this is that, apart from a handful of rich people, most of our ancestors had pretty crappy lives. Start investigating your family tree and most of us only have to go back two or three generations to find real poverty. Should I start a history of Stony’s great grandparents month to raise awareness?