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It is black history month once again … and I have no particular interest in the event. Black history month is not about my history – which is a fundamental part of British history as the descendant of enslaved Africans. It is, instead, about a ritual activity working to perpetuate something that is not true.
There is not and never has been black history. There is human history, world history. There is the history of African peoples including that of those Africans who were enslaved and their descendants who are scattered across the globe today. There are the histories of those who have been colonised and who have developed ties with Britain, ties which have been collapsed under the identifier of ‘black and minority ethnics’ in Britain today.
Having developed my conscious bicultural competence I have made the transition from ‘black’ to ‘British African Caribbean’. Although I have never involved myself in black history month in any significant way over the years it is now very unlikely that I will be an advocate for it in the future. I am now more concerned about the British African Caribbean cultural heritages and how they have shaped and are continuing to shape our lives in Britain.
John Ogbu, the late educational anthropologist, noted that the problem the ‘black community’ in the US faces, and this is true for those of us in the UK too, is the cultural model we use to shape our lives. I am in strong agreement with Ogbu’s claim that when comparing ethnic groups it is not their group’s
“experiences of economic, political, or other discriminatory treatment at the hands of the members of the dominant group, nor the cultural and language barriers they encounter in school …..Rather, the more academically successful minorities differ from the less academically successful minorities in the type of cultural model that guides them, that is in the type of understanding they have of the workings of the larger society and of their place as minorities in that working order.”
Focussing on black history and black history month keeps this dysfunctional cultural model in place. It keeps our eyes off British culture and how it, through its hidden social controls, supports our complicity in our own oppression.
It seems that this Black History Month the best thing I can do is to support as many people as possible in understanding the dysfunctions of black history month and how it works to maintain an unequal racial status quo.
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