...support and extend this effort by teachers. A snippet:
Eighth-grader Michael Clark knows all about civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and Thurgood Marshall. But he also can give you the rundown on Jo Ann Robinson and Charles Hamilton Houston, who worked behind the scenes to fuel the movement.He knows all about the slaying of NAACP field officer Medgar Evers in 1963, but he can also describe how the killing of black 14-year-old Emmett Till -- who flirted with a white woman -- stirred protests nine years earlier.
It's not AA Month because we are not AA. Of course, all of us aren't black either; but it is the generally accepted standard to say "black" and mean the people of America whose roots are based in Africa, be they direct descendants of the Motherland or not. I use the word "Afrimerican", which is more indigenous to me and suggests exactly where we are as a people, not African nor American, but a melting pot of the two that has traversed over time into what we now like to call "people of color". Why go through the trouble? I call em like I see em.
Posted by: Renee at February 19, 2005 03:24 PM
Black History month (how come it ain't AA History Month??) will not be a realistic, honest academic exercise until it includes the analysis of why the average brotha in the US of A is SO MUCH better off than in practically any other part of the world - ESPECIALLY in Africa.
(maybe them po'folk ain't got 'nuf self-esteem...)
Posted by: True_Liberal at February 19, 2005 11:20 AM