A Short Post About A Short Month

"I liken having a black history month in February and concentrating study on that to milk that's just about to go sour. You can still drink it but it just doesn't taste right" said Phillip Roth in his novel The Human Stain. I most definitely believe that he is onto something- it seems forced to me to have a whole month dedicated to blacks. A few initial questions I had were how did black history month start, who created it, and will it ever end?

Although this article about the history of this month is a bit dated, it is still true. To summarize: in 1926 a man named Dr. Carter G Woodson originally created Black History week in February in the week that was the birthdays of both Frederick Douglass, a former black slave and abolitionist, and President Abraham Lincoln who signed the Emancipation Proclomation. He was appalled by the lack of information the public had about their heritage. This later turned into an entire month in 1976 simply because the public began celebrating it earlier and finishing celebrating it later. (Here is a little point of irony: blacks are given the shortest month to celebrate their history.)

Now it is 86 years later and people are still unsure of whether or not blacks are being left out of the picture. I mean that both figuratively and literally. This past week in my American Studies class we have been discussing TV Tokenism. My teacher defined the token as a supporting character added to the show as a minority. Whether or not you have heard of TV Tokenism, this phenomenon most likely sounds familiar now. Just think about the black best friend, the boss never seen without a tie and suit, or the loving nanny. Many people have been upset by the fact that blacks are still never seen as the main characters in tv shows and only ever as figures of minorities to satisfy minority activist groups and members of minority groups. These characters are very forced in my opinion. However, I would be more upset if these characters did not exist and we saw a solely white cast.

Now I am curious, is it better to have these forced characters in these shows, or should we just accept the fact that blacks do not earn the same starring roles on tv shows that whites do? And in a time of political correctness, can we expect these tokens to ever disappear along with Black History Month? Are these symbols still even needed?