One Tree in the Forest

Probably the most compelling (I love that word) thing about Black History Month is the throngs of American's who don't understand why we have to have a Black History Month. I was sitting in a Buddhist Sunday Service once and a small boy was reciting his lessons on Buddhism for the congregation. Very cute stuff; little tiny Asian boy (probably Japanese), missing and crooked teeth reciting The Four Noble Truths. Apparently he wasn't familiar with the word ignorance because when he got to that part instead of ignorance he said ignore ants. The room tried and mostly failed to suppress the chuckles, but while I was laughing I also thought how correct his mistake had been.

Ignorance is usually defined as: The condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed. The real problem in America, and likely the world, isn't what people don't know but what they do or should know and choose to ignore; IGNOREance. As far as I can tell there isn't a history of Black History in the United States, but I can remember being told by an adult that there were no great accomplishments by Black Americans or Africans in general because Black people simply weren't capable of such things. He told me that Africans had never advanced beyond living in grass huts because they weren't capable of building buildings. He told me that Africans didn't develop clothing beyond the loin cloth because Black people weren't capable of the type of advanced thought it takes to create clothes. He told me that Europeans had done Africans a favor by removing them from their backwards culture and sharing the benefits of advanced civilization with them, and that all African Americans should be grateful to White Americans because if it weren't for slavery we'd all be in Africa living in grass huts.

My parents were born in the '40s. My mother picked cotton. Prior to 1964 my parents were not allowed to eat in restaurants, use public rest rooms, stay in hotels or motels or vote, and that was just the law. Social convention was even more restrictive than the law. Everyone in the United States born between 1940 and 1960 knows this.

I was born in the '60s. By the time I was ten the Civil Rights movement was basically over, not because of the passing of the Civil Rights Act, but because all of the out spoken, charismatic leaders of the movement had been murdered by lunatic assassins or the Police. Many people were hurt by the deaths and many assumed that the deaths were related, in fact an attempt to end the Civil Rights Movement, which is basically what happened. So many people believed the murders were related that riots broke out across the country. People died, whole areas were burned to the ground.

The '70s and early '80s were basically growing pains for most Americans. There were more riots over desegregation of public schools and places. Several times a year the KKK or Neo-Nazis terrorized or killed people.

The riots have never actually stopped. There's new rhetoric to discourage riots. My favorite is "You're only hurting yourselves." This is a favorite of mine because of how telling it is about the impetus for riots. Its saying, "We don't care about you or your community, and we never have. If you burn it down you're only hurting yourselves, and we might just as well refuse to rebuild it and let you live in the streets, which is what we wanted to do with you any way." The fact that there is a "community" or area for poor people to live in is also very telling.

The fact that the poor are predominately Black is pretty telling too. None of this is hidden information. These are the facts of our day to day lives which people choose to ignore. I've seen people post NeoNazi/White Supremacist/White Pride emblems on their blog and say they don't understand why they're not allowed to be proud of their race, and are tired of being made to feel guilty about America's history of racism and oppression of African Americans. The post was followed by comments from many 360° members thanking her for saying what they themselves are always thinking. She was heralded as brave and decent. There are tens of millions of Americans who don't understand why anyone would find the Confederate Flag offensive. I'm regularly told that if you hate racists you're racist against racists.

There are tens of millions of Americans, Black and White, who feel that African Americans are responsible for the majority of crime in the United States. Crime in poor black communities is exactly the same as crime in poor white communities. Its not hidden. Look at any poor white community. It looks exactly like a poor black community. You see the same people doing the same things; committing the same crimes, using the same drugs, even wearing the same clothes if you disregard the slogans on the front. Its true that poor black communities are in every major city in the United States and much more publicized than poor white communities. Its also true that there are a greater percentage of poor blacks than there are poor whites, and from all that you could get the impression that African Americans are responsible for the majority of crime in the United States. Of course you'd have to disregard Organized Crime, historically an all white organization, and disregard the thousands of books, articles and studies that document the literal billions of dollars Organized Crime makes from its activities in the United States. If you ignored all those things it would be easy to come to the conclusion that it was a "Black Problem".

Morgan Freeman hates Black History Month. He says that the only way we're going to resolve the problem of race in America is to stop talking about it. He's probably right. Look at all that other things that have gone away because no one ever talks about them.