Daryl Davis: We Need to Get Rid of Black History Month

And now check out Martin Luther King. We had to fight, fight for decades to have Martin Luther King Day. There was a lot of resistance to that. Do you realize that, and a lot of resistance was the fact that Martin Luther King is the only American man in this country to have a holiday all to himself. And guess what? He's black. What do you mean by a holiday all to himself? What about Columbus Day? Columbus is not an American. Oh, that's right. Okay. Well, he kind of was when he became one. No, he thought he didn't. Well, he did. First of all, Columbus didn't even land here and he was like basically a serial killer. He was a serial killer. He was a rapist and a pillager. He didn't discover a damn thing. Didn't they call it an indigenous people's day now? Yeah. Now, how do you discover something when you get there, people are already there? Come on. Be real. Well, only that. Why did it take until basically the latter half of the 20th century before people came to grips with the fact that he was an atrocious human being? When we were kids, when I was a little bit younger than you, I'm 52, when I was in high school, it was Columbus. They nailed the ocean blue. They're pinned to the Santa Maria. Right. Nino pinned to the Santa Maria. This was a guy who was an explorer. He was going there for Spain. And then when you get older and you read these missionaries' accounts of the horrific crimes. And we still celebrate him. Yeah. Well, I mean, do we sort us out? We kind of are done celebrating him, right? No, we still have Columbus Day. It should be abolished. I thought it's indigenous people's day now. They call it that. But on the counter, it still says Columbus Day. Does it? Yeah. Not on the Apple calendar. Really? That's cool. I don't think so. Maybe Apple's ahead of his time. I think it says indigenous people's day now. Okay, that's cool. Maybe I'm wrong. But it fucking should. It should. Yeah. Now, so we used to have two white guys who each had a holiday all to himself, Americans. Well, who are those guys? We used to have, maybe before your time, during my time, George Washington Day and Abraham Lincoln Day. Really? Well, those days. You didn't remember that? I don't remember that. Yeah. And then, so we had too many holidays, so they combined those two days into one day called President's Day. Oh, okay. Those were too many holidays. Yeah. So, enough productivity. Exactly. So, yeah. So, they took those away and combined them. So, now, the only American man who has a holiday to himself is a black man, and they can't handle it. Martin Luther King. Now, we had to fight for decades to give this man a holiday when he gave his life to bring this country together, yet we give a holiday to Christopher Columbus, who, as you pointed out, was a murderer, a serial killer, a pillager, a rapist. Okay, who didn't discover a damn thing? All right. Martin Luther King never murdered, pillaged, and raped, but yet we didn't want to give him a holiday. You know, so, you know, that's the inequity in this country. And I'll tell you something else. Now, there are a lot of people who would disagree with me, and that's okay, because we're Americans, we can disagree. You know, we're all individuals, but there are people who will agree with me also. And I've been saying this now for 22 years. One of the things that will help us to advance into the 21st century, because we are behind the times, we need at this point to get rid of Black History Month. Now, I know a lot of people listening are going to, like, freak out with this guy talking about, blah, blah, blah. Let me explain, all right? For the longest time, we needed Black History Month. Black history was not being taught in our schools. Now, you remember when you pointed out a moment ago that when you were in school, you know, this was a hero looked up to him, et cetera, and then you go to college and you learn otherwise. When I was in high school, it was not in our textbooks that we had internment camps with Japanese Americans. I did not learn that until I got to college. I'm like, what? Are you kidding me? I didn't believe it. Now it's in the textbooks. That's what I'm saying, we're behind the times. Okay. So anyway, we didn't have Black History, all right? What we had was called American history. It might as well have been called white history because that's all it was. And even in some cases, whites were being given credit for things they did not invent and for places they did not discover. But we knew, we were told at home, things like that, but not in schools. So we had to fight, fight, fight. And finally, we got one week. It was called Negro History Week. Carter G. Woodson created that. And schools had Negro History Week one week a year. We continued fighting harder and harder. Finally we got one month. You know, nobody's going to give us everything at one time, right? They had doled out little by little. So we got that one month, shortest month of the year, right? February, 20 days. Yeah, that's no coincidence. But we accepted it for two reasons. It was the birth month of two of our heroes, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. All right? So we accepted that. And then we stopped fighting. And that was a mistake on our part. We became complacent. All right? And now it's my belief that Black History Month has become detrimental to us, to all of us, white and black. I'll tell you why. Yes, we needed it for a certain period of time because we had nothing. But here's the problem. We only studied Black History in February. And each February we studied the same half a dozen people, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and one or two other ones. By the time we get through half a dozen, oh, our month is over. We did our black thing. Let's move on. All right? And yet we study Benjamin Franklin, Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Francis Scott Key all year long. We're constantly reinforcing what they did all year long. We never forget who flew the kite and the lightning hit the key and we have electricity. We all know it's Ben Franklin. All right? But yet if you ask some kid in June, say, who was Harriet Tubman? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember her. Yeah. She was that lady who refused to give a receipt on the bus. They got confused with Rosa Parks because there's been no reinforcement since February. And then next year, next February, it's the same half a dozen people. All right? So you're constantly – I'm not taking anything away from those people. They were some of the greatest. All right? But you're constantly reinforcing that there were only six or seven black people in this whole country who ever did anything. What about the guy who invented the traffic light? What about the person who invented the ironing board and so many other black discoveries and inventions? Oh, well, we didn't have time for that. We only have one month. Yeah, but you've got time to talk about Ben Franklin all year long. You know? Women's History Month is March. We need to get rid of that, too. Take these things out of those months and put them where they belong under the umbrella of American history and teach them all year long. That way kids get accustomed to this and they learn and they have more respect for each other. Look, I remember when I was a kid, Miss America Beauty Contest, there were only two categories. And it was all white women. Black women were not allowed to join to compete in Miss America. All the judges were white males. Two categories. The evening gown, evening wear, and the swimsuit. That was it. Women were objectified. They were sex objects. You know, they didn't have talent. They didn't need to write an essay or show what else they can do. They just looked at and judged on that. So black women were deemed not beautiful enough to compete in Miss America. Plus they didn't want any white men judging a black woman in a bathing suit or whatever. So black women began having low self-esteem because they were told they were not as beautiful as these other women. So what did we as black people do to elevate the self-esteem of black girls? We created the Miss Black America Beauty Pageant to give them something to aspire to. And that worked for a while. Finally Miss America, the big one, came to its senses and opened its doors to law. Wait, what was that? I don't know the exact year. But I guess it was back in the 70s sometime. Opened its doors to all American women regardless of their ethnicity, color, or whatever. As long as they were American, they could compete. And since that time, we've had more than one Miss America who's been black, starting with Vanessa Williams and then Debbie Turner. I think maybe one or two other ones since that time. So now, because Miss America has come into the time, we can get rid of Miss Black America. We don't need it anymore, right? We got the main one. When are we going to come to American history? We need to get rid of Black History Month. We just finished the first black American president. What are we going to do with Obama? Are we going to put him in the February box because he's black? Only talk about him in February. Don't talk about him in March or September because he's black history. Put him in February. Well, you know, I'm at a loss for words, man. It's crazy how we do this.