Black History Is America’s History
This Black History Month calls us to tell the truth about the present
February is Black History Month. This month is an annual recognition and remembrance of the contributions of Black Americans to American life and history. This year marks the 50th anniversary of its national commemoration in 1976, when President Gerald Ford proclaimed it as part of the bicentennial celebrations. Although he was the first president to acknowledge the month and therefore the historic significance of black people in our nation’s history, what we now know as Black History Month grew out of decades of work by leaders like Carter Woodson. Throughout this month, there will be many events sharing stories of how Black people have changed America from slavery to Reconstruction, to Jim Crow, to the Civil Rights movement with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, and to our present day.
That all became personal for me growing up as a teenage white boy in Detroit. There was no official Black History Month back then, but the stories of Black Americans began to get through to me in my white neighborhood, school, and church as I started really listening to my city. From what I was hearing, the big question that rose up for me was why life in White Detroit and Black Detroit seemed so different. After not getting honest answers to those questions in my white world, I began to take jobs in the city to earn money for college, alongside young Black men whose life stories were so different from mine. Those interactions eventually changed my life story. And I just showed up at Black churches, where I was taken in, listened, and started to get some answers to my questions. The Black Church has been integral to American history, to the success of the Civil Rights movement, and also to me. What is now celebrated in Black History Month became, for me, a lived and life-changing education as a white man in America.
But the truth is that the story of racism and racialized slavery in the United States of America did not simply end in the past. It didn’t end with slavery, or with the success of the Civil Rights Movement, and it definitely did not end when February became known as Black History Month. We still see efforts to roll back civil and human rights for Black people in America, and these racist efforts are evident in the policies and practices of the Trump Administration.
The most controversial sentence I have written in my life as a writer (so far) was the first sentence of a Sojourners magazine cover story published in 1987, which read, “The United States of America was established as a white society, founded upon the near genocide of another race and then the enslavement of yet another.” That sentence inspired a study guide that Sojourners, as an organization, put out, and finally a book I wrote called America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America.
The response to that sentence was overwhelming and very contradictory. Some called it “outrageous,” while others named it “courageous.” And although their responses rhymed, the sentence itself was neither. Anyone who takes the time to look at our nation’s history would and should consider that “controversial” statement to be just the facts of history. I go through that statement in every class I teach at Georgetown now. My students always have a deep response to that sentence, which sparks a wide class discussion.
Over a decade has passed since America’s Original Sin was published. Bryan Stevenson wrote the foreword to the book and said in it, “Slavery didn’t end in 1865, it just evolved.” Bryan focuses his work on mass incarceration and the death penalty as prime examples, and tells the story of how a police officer approached him as he parked his car outside his own home in Atlanta, and threatened to “blow my head off.”
Black history is America’s history, and the month of February is meant to celebrate the rich and profound impact black people have had, but it is also a time to reflect on the sins we have committed as a nation. The legacy of America’s Original Sin has indeed evolved and is very present today in the White House.
Trump literally started his first presidential campaign with the accusation that Barack Obama was not a citizen of the United States, not a real American—a claim that echoed a long history of treating Black citizenship as conditional. Just last week, he shared an image depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, invoking one of the oldest racist tropes in American life. Whether in rhetoric, imagery, or immigration policy that disproportionately targets Black communities, like Somalis in Minneapolis, and Haitians in Springfield, we are reminded that the patterns of racial hierarchy described in our history books have not disappeared, even with the administration’s efforts to erase parts of it. Bryan Stevenson’s assessment continues to be true—slavery didn’t end, it evolved.
Whether Trump is a racist is an inadequate question. He and his father are long-time racists, refusing to rent apartments to Black people. Our nation’s issue is not Trump or his blatantly racist administration. The real issue is why such rhetoric still finds oxygen in American public life.
For me, as a white man who had to learn by listening to my city and to the Black church, Black History Month is a call to repentance. Repentance is not guilt. It is not self-condemnation. It is turning around and refusing to look away. It is allowing truth to change us.
If America’s original sin was the creation of a society that declared some more human than others based on whiteness, then repentance requires us to reject every modern expression of that lie. The racism we see today is not a departure from our story—it is part of it.
I encourage all of you to please listen to the truth of Black History Month and learn the full narrative of America’s past, present, and future. This means we must take the invitation and practice introspection and look within to find if we have accepted distorted narratives, benefited from systems we did not question, or stayed quiet when we could have spoken up.
Let this Black History Month be a chance to renew our commitment to stand closer to our neighbors who are being targeted. Black History Month should become personal for all of us. Let us heed the calls to action by choosing our better angels over our worst demons regarding race in America.
To be human is to be insecure and this core feeling deprives humanity of the sustaining gift of Trust. The history of humanity is that the failure to be strong leads to subordination and the will of the strong. The strong protects us as long as we accept this subordination. Contrary to history, We the People of the United States hope to live the Vision of Cooperation for the Welfare of Everyone but because we do not live it in the home, in the school, in the business, nor in the government. The family generally does not live democratically, nor do the students in school experience it, nor do the employees, nor in reality do we citizens. The winner of the election represents only the people of the party and fails to support the welfare of the losing party. It doesn't support the welfare of all the people and thus this role modeling is cultural and fosters tribalism. Racism is the outcome and it goes by many other names. The strong take and in order to hold on, acts to stack the deck in its favor. Who in power is willing to share the booty that was struggled for? Let's recognize that regardless of race, religion, or party affiliation, no one is highly motivated to self-limit the increase in the value of their home, so that when it is up for sale that it is at a lower price to make it affordable to a young family of common means.