When Will Black History Become American History?
Photograph Courtesy the Ohio History Connection
I want the perfunctory way white people currently observe Black History Month to become a thing of the past. Sure, we may read a blog post about Harriet Tubman, but let’s be honest. That’s about it.
I want it to reflect a time when America hadn’t yet faced up to its racial history; hadn’t yet had the difficult conversations necessary to decide how to atone and how to recompense; an America that refused to see its full origin story of enslaving, oppressing, and excluding Black Americans for more than 400 years. In short, I hope we take Black history out of its corner.
But we aren’t there yet. Some would say we aren’t even close. After all, we don’t even do an adequate job today of celebrating the contributions and heroism of Black Americans – in February or any other month.
Yet something feels different this year. In fits and starts, Black history is starting to take up space in what white people think of as “American History.” But like any advancement in the cause of racial justice throughout our history, it’s facing white resistance.
For example, Nikole Hannah Jones’s remarkable 1619 Project in the New York Times is a compelling contribution to a new, more expansive national narrative. Jones begins in 1619, the year in which the forced arrival of enslaved people from the African continent was first documented on American shores. Jones focuses on how American wealth was catalyzed by enslaved labor. To this day, wealth is disproportionately held by white Americans because of accumulated inequality and discrimination. The 1619 Project, which powerfully demonstrates how interconnected race, slavery, and oppression are with American history won attention and accolades, including a Pulitzer Prize for Jones.
Among some on the right, however, 1619 was a provocation. In response, the Trump administration established a commission (which included no specialists in United States history) whose charge was to release a report to support “patriotic education” – once again denying the centrality of race and slavery in our founding. In a spectacularly dissonant move, the commission’s report was released twelve days after a violent mob led by white supremacists attacked the capitol on January 6. The report was criticized by many historians, who described the report as pseudohistory. It was a fitting end to this document that on day one of the Biden administration, those looking for the report got a “file not found” message. If only it was that easy to delete white supremacy.
But at least the new administration is trying. They aren’t just not doing what the prior administration did. Or even undoing it. The Biden-Harris team is using the language of racial equity unapologetically, and with seriousness and fluency. They are signaling at every turn the centrality of this concept to their agenda. That would not have happened without pressure. Without protest. Without full historical reckonings like the 1619 Project.
As a result, reporters are noticing the shift and adjusting. Politico Playbook recently reckoned with the concept of equity and how it differs from equality (a subject wrote about in my inaugural column for Forbes in 2019.)
The idea, in a nutshell, is this: “Equality” means every person is treated the same. They get the same resources from the government and same access to services no matter what. “Equity” is an attempt to account for differences in need among people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Or, as KAMALA HARRIS put it two days before the election: “Equality suggests, ‘Oh, everyone should get the same amount.’ The problem with that, not everybody’s starting out from the same place.”
The distinction is more than a matter of semantics; it is critical to understand how the Biden agenda is taking shape and where it’s heading in the months and years to come. Already, “equity” is an organizing principle of every policy prescription Biden has put forward so far, from housing to climate change.
An outlet like Politico specifically calling out the difference between equality and equity may seem small, but it’s an important shift and one I hope catches on at other mainstream media organizations. It will also take all of us – whether in business, government, grassroots advocacy, or philanthropy – to continue to help shape the conversation about racial equity, to make clear that all of us (including white people) will be better off when we focus on it, and defend it from the inevitable white resistance.
Because to truly understand the concept of equity, we first must reckon with who has access to opportunity in the first place. That’s why a much fuller grasp of American history – of Black history – is essential. The New York Times would do the field of journalism a favor if it took the 1619 Project out of the corner and allowed its editing and reporting decisions to be informed by this much wider, fuller, and truer reckoning with American history. Curriculum based on 1619 is now being taught in schools around the country. If it’s important enough to teach to young people in school, shouldn’t white journalists learn it too? Shouldn’t all of us?
Until we elevate Black history and the concept of racial justice in the “official” American story, we exacerbate the ideological divides plaguing our country. The politics of grievance are fueled by fanning fears of the “other” – an “other” most white people would do well to learn more about. Yet if we continue to keep Black history in a corner, we are denying ourselves the opportunity to build a country grounded in shared set of facts. Imagine what’s possible if we can develop a shared, multiracial narrative about our country that faces up to our flaws with open eyes. Then, together, we fix them. That’s what resilient – and great – democracies do. And that is a kind of national unity worth pursuing.