On February 28, Chris Rock hosts the 88th Academy Awards ceremony—the “White BET Awards,” he tweeted last month, when for the second year in a row there were no black nominees in prominent categories and #OscarsSoWhite was taking off again.
Woodson started Negro History Week to address the subject’s absence from American history, especially as taught in public schools. According to a paper on the origins and purpose of Black History Month by black conservative think-tanker Stacy Swimp, Woodson believed that “if white Americans knew the true history of blacks in America and in Africa, it would help overcome negative stereotyping.”
Well, OK, Wilson was a man of his time. That time has gone, though. We’re still struggling with systematic racism more than four decades after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A first step in coming to terms with America’s original sin, slavery, and its toxic legacy is to stop presenting American history as if it were white history with a few black cameos here and there.
