Let’s get real for a moment. As a white man in America, I know very little about black history. I am starting to learn more, but up until about two years ago, I knew barely anything about when it comes to black history. As a young white American man, my knowledge of black history was probably as follows: Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech, Michael Jordan, and maybe some stuff about George Washington Carver inventing my major source of protein, Peanut Butter.
This was all up until I started dating my wife and some of the stuff she was talking about intrigued me. She and some of her family may see me at times as woke (more on that later), but the real truth is that I know very little about anything in black history.
This makes sense when you look up my upbringing. Let’s think about this for a moment. I grew up in arguably the whitest, most conservative areas possible (Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas), and while in Texas, I went to a white dominant high school, even though I played basketball, a historically black dominant sport. At this white high school, the vast majority of what I learned on black history was that this pastor, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech about a dream he had, and as a result he ended racism and we got a day off of school every January.
Man, was I wrong about everything. Don’t get me wrong, I was enthralled with black culture throughout the 90s and early 2000s. I watched shows like Martin, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and saw movies like Bad Boys, Space Jam, and Hoop Dreams. But when it came to everything about civil rights, slavery, and the good things about black history, I had much, much to learn.
This sent me on a mission that involved reading book after book after book, watching a vast majority of documentaries, and diving into podcasts. I realized from all of the education that I was gaining, that there is still much to learn for all of us white folk when it comes to our own history as Americans, whether we are at fault or not. We need to dive into our history, learn more about our fellow black and brown men, and be real when it comes to talking about race. Because, if we are not talking about it, things will not change. Obviously, the only way to make change is through actually talking and if we don’t start, things will just stay the same.
And no one wants that, at least, we would hope so.
So, I want to do an experiment as we head into Black History Month. I am going to do a weekly blog post detailing what I believe are four key in black history. These will focus on four distinct areas: Civil Rights, Culture, Entertainment, and in science. Maybe, just maybe we can learn a little bit when it comes to black history and try to make sense of all of this as we attempt to move forward in this experiment we call America.
-BP
My Story. 