[Solved] Black History Month

Hi - not sure if this post is in the right place - work life balance? I wanted to ask about Black History Month though so figure this is where it should go...

Ok, confession - my skin is white. What relevance does black history month have to me or my kids? And why is it only important for one month of the year - do white people get the other 11 months? I would kind of hope we were past distinguishing people by their skin colour - does it really make any difference? I don't think I am racist, but to be honest I just don't interact with many people with different skin tones. There don't seem to be many living where I live.

I'm not black but i think that its important to celebrate a section of history that we've largely written out of the history books...

Don't know if you saw events marking the 200th abolition of the slave trade last year, but it was a pretty dark time in our history.. I visited this slave ship exhibition called "The Zong" moored outside the tower of london, as part of an exhibition called "free at last?"

I had never realised what had happened and talking with one of the guides (who was Caribbean) i was introduced to this concept of a "legacy of slavery".. It was explained to me that far from being 200 years in the past issues that can find a root in the slave trade very much affect parts of our society today, underachievement, lack of identity, gangs, maternally dominant culture, sexual infidelity, 'babyfather' etc... I almost couldn't believe it, and obviously there has been 200 years of history since.... In some ways it appears to leave the black community with shame rather than pride... And yet there have been some amazing black figures in history that would rate right up there in for me - Martin Luther-King, Mandela are two of my personal hero's... even the slave trade was not abolished by white men like Wilberforce alone - Equiano, the uprising of slaves on Haiti... Yet our history books seem to barely record the slave trade - nevermind the contribution of the black community itself to it....

I think it's right we celebrate black history month - in fact i wish there were more celebration of culture in our country - isn't the diversity what makes Britian great??

R

underachievement, lack of identity, gangs, maternally dominant culture, sexual infidelity, 'babyfather' etc...

Doesn't that describe white youth of today as well? (Apart from babyfather - dont' know what that means?)

I agree but the statistics seem to point to it being more of a problem in the black community.

- I heard this guy say that a black boy in Brixton is more likely to go to prison than university....
- The prison population also is something like 17% afro-caribbean compared to national proportion of the population being a third of that
- An article on the news section a couple of weeks ago by David Lammy said "We know that 59 per cent of black Caribbean children are looked after by a lone parents." (i think the national average is 25%) see http://www.dadtalk.co.uk/news/youth_vio ... t_race.php

I realise i've not got all the right statistics but i guess you can see there appears to be something more than this is just something affecting all young people

Did you see Silent Witness a couple of weeks ago? The one that dealt with gang crime. It referred to a lot of this stuff... Coach Carter (with Samuel L Jackson) is another movie that picks up on all these things....

Re a definition of "babyfather" i found the following definition on http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/baby-father.html )

Baby father

Meaning = The father of an infant who is not married to or in an exclusive relationship with the mother.

Origin = This is a Jamaican phrase which has been adopted into wider UK usage via the Jamaican community in England. It is known in the West Indies since the early 20th century. A society's need for and adoption of such a term says something about the attitudes toward marriage, i.e. it implies a society with a significant proportion of single mothers. The first evidence I can find of it in print is in a court report in the Kingston newspaper The Gleaner, in July 1932:

"I was returning from my baby father's house."

It began to be used widely in the UK in the 1990s, although it is still most commonly used in the black community.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/baby-father.html

I can understand how knowing about the black history is important but i can't see why we should dedicate a whole month to it.

Britain has a lot of history, some darker than the period of the slave trade like the crusades and the expansion of the empire that could be covered but is missed out in schools today.

i feel it is important that young people know about the history of their own country, i left school knowing more about american history than britains.