Black History Month; Why Don’t People Care More?
(originally posted February 24th, 2005)
I participate in an online networking group called Ryze, and I run my own network (kind of like the old bulletin board system) for people based in central New York, though anyone can join. This month being Black History Month, I’ve posted a fact a day about either a famous black person, or an event that had significance in black history.
We all have the ability to go in and see how many times people have come in to look at what’s been written for every message. What’s somewhat bothersome is that most of the posts there have only had one person look at them, and she’s not even originally from America.
That’s somewhat disturbing, and in my opinion, is further explanation of just how far America has to go to overcome some of its issues with race. I’m definitely not saying that some of the participants are racist; nothing further from the truth. What I am saying, though, is that people avoid history like it’s the plague; most people don’t really care about their own history, so I guess thinking they might care more about the history of black people was kind of naive of me.
However, people can’t really come together and overcome their differences if they’re not willing to even look back at history, whether recent or not, to see where the thoughts and feelings of others might have germinated. It’s disappointing, but I’ll get over it; maybe.
