February: Black history on the cheap
Philippe Chancy ·
Black history does not begin in February. It does not end in February.
We were given one month. Just one. And not just any month. The shortest of the year. Twenty-eight or twenty-nine days to tell centuries of stories. Twenty-eight or twenty-nine days to summarize civilizations, empires, resistance movements, genius, pain, victories, inventions, revolutions. And we're supposed to applaud? They call it Black History Month. A month presented as a tribute, recognition, progress. But the more I think about it, the more it looks like something else: a reduction. Because you don't celebrate an immense history by confining it to a corner of the calendar. You don't do justice to a people by giving them a window... then closing it for eleven months. Let's ask the uncomfortable question Why one month? And why February? Why would Black history need a special slot, while European, Western, colonial history is told all year long, without labels, without parentheses, without permission?
Why would Black history be an appendix to human history? We're told: "It's to highlight it." But light isn't turned on once a year. You let it shine. Because if Black history were truly integrated into textbooks, curricula, national narratives, we wouldn't need a special month.
A history too big for one month Black history isn't just slavery. It's not just suffering. It's not just survival. It's Africa before colonization. It's mathematics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy. It's Haiti, the first free Black Republic. It's struggles, arts, sciences, ideas. So no, this history isn't poor. It's too rich to be contained in twenty-eight or twenty-nine days. The deepest discomfort What bothers me most isn't the existence of the month. It's the fact that some people are satisfied with it. As if we wanted to say: "Thanks for February. We won't bother you for the rest of the year." As if recognition came with an expiration date. Meanwhile, other histories don't have a month. They have the entire year. They are the norm. The others become the exception. What it really reveals Black History Month isn't a victory. It's a symptom. The symptom of a poorly integrated history. The symptom of a still incomplete narrative. The symptom of discomfort that we mask with a calendar.
Black history doesn't begin in February. It doesn't end in February. And it certainly shouldn't be confined there. Black history doesn't need a month. It needs its full and complete place in human history. Not as a parenthesis. Not as a concession. But as something obvious. And as long as we need a special month to remember, maybe it's because we still have a problem with memory.