21 October 2020
Written by: Mick Allen
Black History Month is important not just to Black or other BAME members of our communities locally, nationally and internationally - it has to be important to or considered important to all race, creeds and ethnicities within our society, lest we forget what ignorance and prejudice is capable of.
For us to recognise and appreciate the contribution black people have made to the world and society as we know it, we have to know and learn about it. This is unlikely to happen without platforms such as Black History Month to act as the vehicle for that learning and awareness.
For the most part, we learn what we learn from the classroom or in our adult years through the media and books, be those fiction or reference. These days, for the most part, we are directed by the algorithms of our internet browser searches so its good to have initiatives like Black History Month and other awareness campaigns that offer us suggestions of other topics to search on.
In general, with our history dictated and fed to us by those powers that have either aggressed or conquered, is it any wonder that we have little knowledge or understanding of black history. However, staying ignorant or unaware of black history, black issues or black struggles & triumphs is no longer a passive rationale especially with campaigns such as Black History Month.
The other effect that supporting such campaigns as Black History Month will have, is the questioning of the prejudice that has allowed us to not already have this information available to us in our history books.
Hopefully, our children and grand-children will not need such campaigns in the future – they will have it there on their school bookshelves and on the telly and in the world around them as of right.
I support Black History Month because it shines the spotlight on prejudice of all kinds.