The Black Informant

The following two commentaries fall right in line with something I said several times on this site:

“Ask 5 members of the ‘America still owes us’ crowd to define reparations and you will get AT LEAST 10 different responses.”

When I first read this article last week, I decided to ignore it because IMO it is not worth quoting. But after coming across the second article via BookerRising today, I decided to post both of them here and let YOU the reader write the commentary.

Article 1.

Black History is Depressing (Donel Williams)

Sure, you open a history book and see names like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez, and (insert any leader here). But, do the same names we learn about still hold the same meaning after all these years?

Depends. Give me some new black history please! It wouldn’t kill you to teach me about people I know of yet know nothing about. Hell, I was watching Sanford and Son, so teach me something about the dude that played Lamont.

[...]

Another thing: stop depressing me. It sucks. Life as a black man might go a little easier if I didn’t get all this pressure put on me every February. I always get some old lady telling me stories about Dr. King or Malcolm X and how she used to throw her panties at Sam Cooke back in the day. That last one had nothing to do with the point, but it was very funny to me so, oh well.

Why isn’t George Washington Carver’s name on one jar of peanut butter? For God’s sake, you mean neither he, nor anyone in his family could capitalize on that opportunity? I mean, if Peter Pan can have his own brand of peanut butter, and Donald Duck has his own orange juice, and Popeye has his own chicken joint, why couldn’t Carver get his own brand of peanut butter?

But back to what I was saying. I hate - I mean can’t stand - February. (more…)

Article 2.

Black History Month trivializes black history (Cynthia Tucker)

Thank heaven it’s nearly over. I’m sick of walking into bookstores that have pushed all their books by black authors to the front of the store and lumped them together - no matter their subject. Or worth, for that matter. I’m tired of TV productions that offer a shallow salute to a handful of relatively well-known black inventors or politicians. And I’m disheartened that this annual trek through Disney-fied history has done little to place black Americans at the center of the American story. (source)

I will say this (then I will sit down): I find it very ironic that these two commentaries in many ways reflect the sentiments (sentiments that I have seen around the web) of the same crowd that regularly hammers people like Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell and all Black Conservatives for burying their heritage and not being “Black enough”.