As a moniker, ‘Black History Month’ does a lot of heavy lifting. You’re talking about all the histories of Blackness around the world in just one month? It is the definition of a Sisphyean task.
This assessment might seem jaded, but it comes from the pendulum swing between erasure and celebration that Black histories experience in mainstream culture and society at large. I find that a scene in Malorie Blackman’s first installation of her groundbreaking Noughts & Crosses series is the best microcosm for this phenomenon. Noughts & Crosses follows Sephy and Callum’s ill-fated love story in a world of racial prejudice. Callum is frustrated in class as Nought history is misrepresented and significant achievements are downplayed or dismissed by his teacher. Blackman’s author’s note at the end of the novel confirms that the historical figures and their achievements mentioned are all real – and that she didn’t learn about these African-American pioneers at school .
As a literature scholar, Blackman’s approach to negotiating the pendulum swing is fascinating. Callum’s alienation and his teacher’s dismissal come alive precisely because of the decision to include real historical figures in the novel. It is even more telling that these figures need to be confirmed as real via the author’s note – patchy public knowledge of Black histories would make it difficult to tell outright.
The real-world reverberations of the scene continue to be felt, given that Wales is the only UK nation to have made Black history lessons mandatory in schools. It, and the novel series more broadly, speaks to some of the origins of Black History Month. Black History Month was first celebrated in the UK in 1987, coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. It drew on its origins in the United States of America to celebrate Black leaders, educate about Black achievements, and challenge racism and the revisionist history it produces. These aims and efforts are admirable and necessary. We live in a world of acute anti-Black racism, which has real-world (and often, fatal) consequences for people racialised as Black.
But, surely, admirable and necessary efforts aren’t the end goal? The boulder should, at some point, stop at the top of the hill.
Black History Month is caught between celebrating Black histories and lamenting their general absence in the mainstream. To move beyond this impasse, Black histories must be consistently and equitably represented, researched, and celebrated. Black histories, like all histories, are far too fulsome to be confined to a single month – it is, and always should be, a year-round consideration. My vision is that Black History Month is a month of accentuation and emphasis for Black histories, rather than a restoration project for systematic erasure.
References
Malorie Blackman, Noughts & Crosses (2001 – 2019)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-54522248