7487: Black History Month Is Beautiful.

From Newsweek…

The End of Black History Month?
Why I’m not ready to ditch it—yet.

By Raina Kelley | Newsweek Web Exclusive

When did everybody start hating on Black History Month? I have yet to find a person, black or white or anything else, looking forward to the February festivities. At one point, when speaking to a well-known black intellectual about participating in a video NEWSWEEK is putting together, I was stunned by the vehemence of his refusal. It’s not as if I was asking him to march to Birmingham. But I get it. It seems ghettoizing and patronizing to spend one month of every year proving that black history is a holistic part of American history. As Morgan Freeman once famously told Mike Wallace, “You’re going to relegate my history to a month? … Which month is White History Month? … I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.” Because today the divisions between black and white are not as cavernous or ugly as they once were. The contributions of famous black Americans, from Frederick Douglass to Oprah Winfrey, are widely known. Martin Luther King Jr. has his own federal holiday. The president of the United States is black. If tens of millions of white people voted for Barack Hussein Obama, the lesson has been learned, right? As if. Despite the election of Obama, African-Americans still live in a culture that is overreliant on stereotype and slow to explore the complexity of racialized issues such as the ghetto or Haiti. So you can complain about Black History Month all you want. But there’s still work to be done.

When Carter G. Woodson began Negro History Week in 1926, he chose the second week of February to encompass the birth dates of both Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Its purpose then was to teach some and remind others that the history of black people in America was not simply the story of subjugation. Woodson recognized that, shell-shocked from slavery and demoralized by Jim Crow, black Americans had to build a vision that would give them the confidence to partake in the fruits of freedom. “We have a wonderful history behind us,” Woodson said. “If you are unable to demonstrate to the world that you have this record, the world will say to you, ‘You are not worthy to enjoy the blessings of democracy or anything else.’ “ But Woodson—himself a historian and only the second African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard (W.E.B. Du Bois being the first)—recognized the radicalism inherent in a call to educate and inspire African-Americans. For, if Negro History Week asked blacks to slough off the scars of oppression, it also demanded that whites acknowledge their role as oppressors. Woodson’s aim was also to rebut the inaccurate and insulting stereotyping that then passed for knowledge about African-Americans—such as the canards that black people aren’t as intelligent as other races and are more prone to criminality and dancing. And sadly, nearly 100 years and a civil-rights movement later, too many people still believe that.

Instead of using Black History Month to demand that the promise of freedom inherent in the Constitution be given to all its citizens, our culture has given in to the impulse to see the month as the commemoration of “a civic fairy tale,” as NEWSWEEK editor Jon Meacham wrote in his book Voices in Our Blood, “Everything came together in August 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and conjured his Promised Land … A moment later, it seems now, the ‘White Only’ signs came down, the polling booths opened up, and the Dream was more or less fulfilled.” For Black History Month to once again seem culturally relevant, part of its time must be spent asking why there are still so many negative portrayals of black people in our culture—we can’t just spend all 28 days talking about the nice ones. And rather than wasting time bemoaning the existence of Black History Month, why don’t we use it to proselytize for the issues that need to be more fully covered and understood the other 337 days of the year—such as failing inner-city public schools, institutionalized poverty, health-care disparities, and job discrimination?

Black history is American history, no doubt. But Black History Month is a measure of how fully or accurately our story is being told and a reminder of the work yet to be done. Thus, it works in exactly the same way as Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October or Gay and Lesbian Pride Month in June. I understand the desire of Freeman and others to do away with what seems at times like a catalog of complaints. Trust me, I’m not always thrilled to be the radical—constantly reminding people that half-full is still half-empty. But despite the burden, consider that without me, without Morgan Freeman, without all of us, “absent, too, would be the need for that tragic knowledge which we try ceaselessly to evade: that the true subject of democracy is not simply material well-being but the extension of the democratic process in the direction of perfecting itself,” as Ralph Ellison wrote in What America Would Be Like Without Blacks, “and that the most obvious test and clue to that perfection is the inclusion—not assimilation—of the black man.” When Black History Month returns to that work and moves away from the limp B-roll it has become, then it will be working not only toward a noble and patriotic goal but also as Carter Woodson intended—toward its own irrelevance.

7348: Stereotyping And The Salahis.

From Newsweek…

The Reality of Stereotyping
Why it’s OK to hate celebrity wannabes. Just don’t pigeonhole them.

By Raina Kelley | Newsweek Web Exclusive

I feel sorry for the Salahis, the White House gate-crashers. I can’t help it. Can you imagine being internationally renowned as social-climbing, empty-headed almost-reality-TV stars with too much spending power but not enough taste or self-awareness to resist breaking into a state dinner? But I can’t defend them. They just seem too awful. Michaele Salahi is an ambassador to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s wine and tourism industry. Seriously,it says so on her Facebook page. And while it’s hilarious that such a post even exists (Virginia is like the 37th state I would think of in connection with wine), it’s just sad that she feels the need to brag about it. And if Mr. Salahi wants to be even a percentage point believable as the director of America’s Polo Cup, he should at least ape the physique of the rider, not the horse. Sure, the world is full of pretenders. (As Maureen Dowd wrote in her New York Times column on the same subject: “The mock has run amok.”) But the Salahis represent with crystalline brilliance what Jon Stewart calls “fame-whore a--holes who crave attention.” And who the heck wants to be that poster child?

OK, I’m being kind of mean. I don’t know the Salahis at all. Some of my bile comes from what I’ve read on blogs and in gossip columns, but I’m really just making sweeping judgments about their ilk: reality-TV strivers. Although I constantly rail against the dangers of stereotyping on the basis of race and gender, I cannot resist lumping the Salahis in with the likes of Jon and Kate or the hordes of wannabes who audition for the Real Housewives shows. Yes, I know there’s nothing to stop me from applying the same logic—as it is with a few, so it is for all—to shape my opinions about Asian folks or the blind. But if stereotyping is so wrong, why can’t I stop doing it?

Usually, this is the paragraph where I parse the available facts and beg you to give the Salahis the compassion and sympathy we should always afford individuals. But because I hate the Real Housewives of Orange County, New York, New Jersey, and Atlanta—all of them—I cannot to come to Salahi’s defense. If their formal invitation to the state dinner turned up tomorrow, I would still dislike the Salahis because even with an invite, they are still too tacky and low rent for words. And I know I’m not alone. Check out the comments on Michaele’s Facebook page. But if the Salahis were black, we (most of us anyway) would hesitate before hurling stereotypical insults their way. That’s because we’ve been trained, at least in the media, to think twice before calling African-Americans names (think Imus). Michaele and Tareq have the misfortune of fitting a type—like WASPs and the religious right—that it’s OK to despise and make fun of in public. And, even if I can’t stick up for the Salahis, I have to cry foul on that kind of behavior, starting with myself.

We don’t stereotype just to be mean. In fact, we probably couldn’t get through a day without it. As John Dovidio, a psychology professor at Yale recently told me, we do it as a way of making sense of our surroundings. “Stereotyping allows us to understand a complex world with a minimum of effort and as quickly as possible,” he says. “Most of the time we develop rules of understanding the world that work, but because it’s a simplifying system that trades efficiency for accuracy, it can become distorted and biased in a self-perpetuating way.” We assign characteristics to groups and decide who belongs and who doesn’t based on inaccurate summations such as “Black people commit all the crime,” “All women are desperate to get married,” “Men are dogs,” “Blonde women dressed in saris and married to men with vaguely foreign-sounding names were probably invited to the state dinner for the prime minister of India even though they don’t have an invitation.” Which works great until it’s your turn to get offended.

The sad fact is, each of us is just one viral video or e-mail or 911 call from becoming the butt of a national joke. We all fit a type to some degree, whether it’s the loud mean black woman who shoves you out of the way to get on the subway before you or the painfully pretentious 20-something white guy hogging the best table at the coffee shop because he’s working on his novel. But if we’re asking the Secret Service and other public servants, such as police officers and baggage screeners, to overcome stereotyping (also known as racial profiling), then all of us have to try, too. Which means we have to fall out of love with pigeonholing. Even if reality TV promotes name calling and broad, usually negative, stereotypes. TLC is creating a new reality show titled One Big Family, about a morbidly obese family and their struggle to live in a skinny world. Do you think people will watch that to understand what it feels like to be overweight in America or to laugh and point fingers? Even if the “big” family did participate voluntarily, the cable channels deserve blame for encouraging these kinds of people. Or maybe we should blame ourselves, sitting at home boosting the ratings.

7117: Hiding The Race Card.

From the September 28, 2009 issue of Newsweek.