I Dreaded Black History Month During Childhood. But Not for the Reasons You May Think

You Can’t Just Cancel Black History Month

I read an article the other day about parents in Utah who tried to opt their children out of the Black History Month curriculum. I guess, to them, learning about Black History just wasn’t that important. Because of public backlash, the parents eventually decided that it probably wasn’t a good idea to “opt-out of Black History Month.” The school eventually apologized.

Until high school, I secretly dreaded Black History Month. I attended a school, located in Los Angeles, that was mainly white and Korean. Every year, we learn about the same topics during Black History Month: Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, the Underground Railroad, and Harriet Tubman. They taught those topics as if we had forgotten what we had learned from the prior year. While discussing slavery and the Civil Rights movement, I would always receive sympathetic glances from my classmates.

I wasn’t at all an expert in Black history but knew more than my classmates. And I was interested in learning more because I’ve always been naturally curious. The bulk of my Black History knowledge I gained from family and church (they always highlighted one prominent Black figure every Sunday). But I didn’t learn a great deal about Black History until I attended high school and college.

I remember sarcastically saying to one of my last elementary teachers, “Yeah right, Black people don’t write science fiction”. She pulled out Octavia Butler’s, Kindred and told me to read it for extra credit. Yeah, 6th grade is probably not the best time to read that book, especially by yourself without a class to discuss it with. But she handed it to me, like it was Little House on the Prairie, and made me write a book report on it. I received an A.

I was popular in elementary school, treated fairly well in school. But during Black History Month, I always had to prepare for comments like “I’m so sorry that slavery happened.” In the middle of math class.

“Fantastic, can you leave me alone so I can try and solve this equation on the board?”

Or, my favorite was during recess when a friend asked if my grandmother was, “like a slave, or did she know any slaves?”

My grandma would shuffle children to soccer practice and give me candy to pass to my friends to stay in their good graces. They all knew her.

“No, she was not a slave. She was a court reporter. Slavery ended 140 years ago. My grandma is 60.”

And then there were the comments about the food. My mom was a single mom so I made my lunch after 2nd/3rd grade or so. It was a typical 80s/90s lunch. A sandwich with processed lunch meat or peanut butter and jelly, a lunch box granny smith apple, two cookies (even though I didn’t like cookies. I used them to trade for something else), and a bag of chips.

But if I stayed with my grandma, lunch looked very different. I remember opening my lunch box in 2nd grade and there was a whole pork chop in the lunch box. Like a whole, bigger than my face, pork chop. She packed hamburgers, roast with mashed potatoes, and even tacos. No one’s lunches looked like that.

And she would pack soda (and would give it to me for breakfast). It didn’t affect me and I hated the bubbles in soda. So, I traded it for something I liked like fruit roll-ups. She always packs lots of fruits and vegetables but the main course was truly a main course. Like something you may eat tonight.

One day in fourth grade, she packed fried chicken. She rarely ate fried chicken but two pieces sure did land in my lunch box.

“Is that what you guys eat for dinner a lot?”

“No! We didn’t even eat this last night! She made spaghetti!”

To this day, I have no idea where that fried chicken came from. And although I wanted to eat it right then and there, I just ate the grapes and chips at lunch that day. (I ate the fried chicken after school when all of my friends had gone home).

I’m still the same girl I was before February 1.

In 5th grade, we had a Cultural Day and my grandma surprised me with two outfits made from Kente cloth. She figured I could wear one for Cultural Day and could wear the other to church during Black History Month. Both of the outfits were beautiful and the colors were almost magical. I looked at myself in the mirror and felt almost like a princess.

But I didn’t want to wear them to school. I didn’t want to disappoint her. But I didn’t want to wear the outfit to school. I eventually went to school in my beautiful outfit one day.

All the teachers (even the ones who hated me) were ready to bow to me as if I were royalty, my peers looked at me like I was wearing some hard to find Halloween costume, and I received the highest grade on my Cultural Day report. But despite my extensive research and decent delivery (my grandma made me practice until 11 pm the night prior), my classmates still asked truly bizarre questions.

“What country in Africa is your family from?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Do you wear that on weekends normally?”

“No, on Saturdays I wear a soccer uniform most of the day. On Sundays, I wear a church dress.” I got in trouble a lot in elementary school for my “sassy comebacks”.

Only 10 more days and this month will be over.

Days after Cultural Day, a little kindergartner came up to me, grabbed my hand, and looked intensely at my skin. Of course, I jerked my hand back, causing the kindergartner to bashfully retract. I had no clue what she was doing.

But, years later, my mom told me of a similar situation at work where a coworker grabbed, examined, and rubbed her hand, probably to see if it felt the same as hers. Did black skin feel like white skin? My mom was a little more diplomatic as she slowly retracted her hand away from the woman but I hope her coworker received an answer to her question.

Black History Month was Awkward but Necessary

As elementary kids, we talked through many uncomfortable moments. It was like many of my white friends had saved up a year’s worth of questions about black people and dumped them on me starting February 1. But we all talked through a lot of the biases and stereotypes, probably passed on to them by their families (who were all very nice to me but wouldn’t dare ask me 90% of the questions their children asked during Black History Month).

We all had our own hidden biases and misconceptions that we attempted to work through in our way. I even remember a few weeks after Christmas, a Korean friend of mine said that her mother had made the best lasagna the night before. I was shocked. I thought, “Wait, Koreans eat lasagna?” Then I thought, “well if I eat lasagna, I guess she can eat lasagna too.”

To grow and recover, we have to be willing to learn from one another. We have to be able to ask uncomfortable questions and be prepared to receive uncomfortable answers. And we may have to deal with uncomfortable situations.

We should call people out on their unconscious bias and also be prepared to be called all. But, ultimately, we all have to be patient with each other. Black History Month is about understanding the past, how it affects the present, and how its legacy can guide the future.

I feel sorry for the children whose parents feel that learning about Black History isn’t important for their children. Because Black History Month isn’t just for Black people. It’s a month where everyone, Black, White, Latino, Asian and Native American, can learn and grow from each other.