February is Black History Month. Established to correct historical ignorance, neglect, and rejection of a great culture, it has become a rite of paternalism and a patronizing masquerade. A skewered emphasis on “safe” arenas of African-American consummation, from basketball to cinematic action-heroism, has brokered more insult than reverence. The paradox is that rather than steering us to the high road of respect, it is leaving us in the ravine of condescension.
Killing by such false kindness is a particularly brutal form of mass murder. Behind the veil of the curriculum guide and beneath the hood of charity that smears, is the backhanded implication that African-American gifts are restricted to a few sports, social struggles, media stars, and soft scientists. Tokenism is as invidious though more sophisticated than ever.
Ever since Black History Month was ordained, people of questionable expertise or motives have orchestrated it. They have not included in their campaign for public awareness a full or even decent breadth of feats that African-Americans have contributed to all humanity. The same, unexpanded repertory has been used to exemplify their contributions and legitimize their pride. By harping on boxers rather than brain surgeons, Oprah rather than divas of opera like Jessye Norman, and activists in lieu of architects, the African-American glories of triumph over ordeal are being, in effect, damned with faint praise.
African-Americans have injected oxygen into the lifeblood of every intellectual discipline that has seized mankind’s attention, yet the identical fifty-or-so players on the Race’s A-Team are always fielded to make the pitch to the broad and deprived American consciousness. Some may be “icons”, deservedly so or not. Others may be obscure, rightly or wrongly. Their relevance may be lasting or eroded, earned or bestowed capriciously, as with any personality. Critics abound to wrangle. But I believe that many of the finest specimens of African-American genius have been deliberately suppressed. I do not know why. I don’t think it’s due to illiteracy.
If for argument’s sake we pretend that African-American giants of civilization have not been willfully left out, thus sparing the imperative of conjecture about motives, why would the accidental omission of their mathematicians, neurosurgeons like the doctor in-charge of the recent Siamese separation, physicists, and other charlatan-proof specialties not be fixed? Why is the panorama corrupted by narrow vision still?
Sprinkling my argument with some illustrious names of snubbed titans is not as easy as it should be, but perhaps that’s just as well. Having encountered them, albeit too seldom, their legacy and my permanent memory are on the best of terms. We have such a mature relationship that I have come to take them for granted, as I do Renaissance luminaries whose resume’ gives me the slip at any given time. Maybe that is the proof of true embrace: ovation without self-consciousness. For what they have done I am a better citizen of the world. Drawing a blank trying to recall Charles Drew less implicates my non-political heart than it does my illiberal but sanctioned education.
When the nation is made ready by enlightenment, its good fortune will make Black History Month an anachronism. No culture should by its spotlight eclipse another, and the reputation of one cannot flourish at the expense of another. We are a unified but not yet united civilization.
African-Americans have for centuries been denied knowledge of their self-belonging and led by rogue guides on a booby-trapped tour of self-discovery. As we study the miracle of their flight from subjugation to full partnership in the pursuit of universal wisdom, let us at last grant due compensation for what they have earned at such a stupendous cost.
Ron Isaac is a chapter leader in Queens.
2 Comments:
1 phyllis c. murray
· Feb 1, 2006 at 7:13 pm
“When the nation is made ready by enlightenment, its good fortune will make Black History Month an anachronism. No culture should by its spotlight eclipse another, and the reputation of one cannot flourish at the expense of another. We are a unified but not yet united civilization. ” Ron Issacs
INSIDE THE MELTING POT
By Phyllis C. Murray
In 1991, the phenomenon of unearthing 400 enslaved Africans from a 17th Century African Burial Gound in lower Manhattan, was the beginning of a search by many for their African ancestral past. That road of discovery has had many twists and turns. However, the records remain. The slavers and historians of that era kept copious notes. And fortunately we have had access to the incalculable research from the African Burial Ground Project OPEI Update founded in 1991 and directed for over a decade by Dr. Sherrill Wilson.
If we take another look at life in colonial New York and search beyond the Dutch West India Company’s enticement of free land and free trade, we will see that the DWI company provided another enticement to white settlers: enslaved Africans to labor without compensation. In the East India Company’s charter of Privilege and Exemption for the patrons the following is noted: “in that document for the purpose of encouraging agriculture, the company agreed to furnish colonist as many blacks as they conveniently could. These “blacks” were brought from the West Indies. (Griffin.) Furthermore, as reported by Lamb in the History of New York. “Every family who could afford it invested in the brand of industry filling of several vessels exclusively for the slave trade and the bringing to New Netherlands a large invoice of the colored population of the torrid zone. One of the greatest wants of the colony was skilled labor and indeed labor of any kind. Thus the Dutch recruited settlers with an advertisement that promised to provide them with slaves who would accomplish more work for their master at less expense than what farm servants who must be bribed to go thither by a great deal of money and promises.”(Staples)
The Historic Wyckoff House which is located in Brooklyn, NY is an example of colonial life in early NY. A recent article: “Glimpse the 17th Century at Historic Wyckoff House,” describes the property as one which spanned 40 acres. It was also viewed as a property that was a highly successful working farm. Wyckoff, its owner, became the richest man in the region. It may also be noted that: “Slaveholdings in New York were second only to its counterpart in Charlotte, North Carolina.” (Wilson) We must also acknowledge the fact that not only were Africans enslaved, the Dutch also benefited from the confiscation of Native American land and the enslavement of Native Americans.
The Native Americans and Africans helped make the Dutch wealthy land barons as they farmed large areas, working fruit orchards and attending the livestock for food. Flax was grown for linen thread and sheep provided wool for clothing. A visit to Phillpsburg Manor Upper Mills today in North Tarrytown will provide additional insight into the lifestyle of the Dutch gentry of this period. This site was manned by enslaved Africans that worked in the aforementioned capacities as the Philipses reaped the reward from this free African labor.
“From the Lenape, the Dutch learned how to use the land for survival. Lenape women taught Dutch women how to use dyes from trees, berries and the soil. The settlers hunted wild animals and gathered foods in the woods and the fields.” (Crawford and Secor.) The Africans were brought to the area because of the specific skills the they possessed. The advertisements for fugitive slaves attested to the myriad occupations of Africans in the colonial period. For example: coopers, navigators, planters, brass casters, woodcarvers, weavers, builders, fishers, and sailors translated into financial success for the Wyckoff and other Dutch slavers. “For very department of the household there was a slave allotted. They hoed, drilled, shod horses, made cider, raised hemp and tobacco (Schylerville) looked after the horses and the garden, made and mended the shoes, spun and wove, made nets, canoes, attended to fishing worked as carpenters, each house hold sufficient unto itself . (Humphrey, Mary.)
Bland Taylor writes:” in 1698, 15% of Kings County population were slaves. Kings County by the 18th Century became the heaviest slave holding county in New York State. Although 1/5 of New York State black population were free by the end of the 18th Century only 3% (46) free blacks resided in Kings County, the smallest number in the state.
In largely Dutch Kings and Richmond Counties, the number of enslaved blacks sizable until 1820. Dutch farmers in these counties tenaciously held onto their farms by using valuable slave labor. As late as 1820 , only 55% of Kings County blacks and a minuscule 18% in Richmond County were free. Blacks older than 45 years remained Slaves in 1820, because masters were unwilling to accept responsibility for their maintenance otherwise. (Making a Free People)
The Wyckoff Associated reported the following: In 1835 Cornelius Bennett bought the property from Hendrick Wyckoff. Later the city opened streets resulting in the destruction of two barns and the “Slaves’s quarters.” I 1968 the homestead was designated an official NYC Landmark.
The story of colonial enslavement of African and Native Americans in New York and its environs is repeated throughout Westchester, Putnam Counties. And to know the past is to understand the present. Case in point:The African American presence in Scarsdale, NY is as old as the village itself. And like Brooklyn so many of the 5 boroughs in New York City, Africans were present to change the tangled landscapes. In fact, in 1712, eleven years after the formation of the Manor of Scarsdale, the inhabitants numbered only 12, of whom four were white, the remaining eight were enslaved Africans.(Scharf)
While compiling the data to develop the premise of an early African presence in Scarsdale it became obvious that this information was already well documented in texts by historians. Yet, many Americans were not aware of the fact that Slavery in the United States existed in the North as well as the South.
As a resident of Scarsdale for thrity-five years and a lifetime resident of New York State, it has become evident that some of the issues which impact race relations today, are merely the vestiges from the Slavery of yesteryear.
However, what is truly unique about Scarsdale, may be seen if we look further into the history of Scarsdale. It is then that we can witness the heroic efforts of New York State Governor Daniel Tompkins, a resident of Scarsdale, as he made a recommendation to the Legislature in 1817 to abolish Slavery by 1827. We can also witness the courage of the Quakers who manumitted their enslaved Africans by 1782 and even required themselves to train their former slaves to earn a living and to find a place to live.(Singsen). And we can witness the beneficence of Quakers who were active in the Underground Railroad hiding slaves in barns and secret cupboards on Mamaroneck Road.(Singsen)
.
Racism today is merely a remnant of Slavery’s past revisited in the present. Today , we have two separate chronicles of history : one white and one black. Yet, the two belong together.
Understanding our true past will enable one to understand the present. However, the care of the future is in our hands.
Yes, Ron Issacs, “When the nation is made ready by enlightenment, its good fortune will make Black History Month an anachronism.”
Phyllis C. Murray,
UFT Chapter Leader .
2 Delusions of Mediocrity
· Feb 21, 2006 at 11:26 pm
Delusions celebrates Black History Month…
It must be February. Now is the time when schools and libraries across the country stop doing real history and pretend to believe black people are important or interesting. It’s a coincidence that Black History Month1 is the month with…