Black History Month - What Do you Think?

A friend sent me an article titled "Man on the Street Video: Do You Think Black History Month is Still Relevant?    http://bl128w.blu128.mail.live.com/default.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0

Wanted to know what I thought.

Hmmmmm.

Good question.

Of course I think it is relevant.  As the article points out, anything that chronicles "our tremendous development out of a dark past" is relevant.  I am a firm believer in the proposition that history can be either the launching pad for a promising future, or the pit into which a doomed future returns.  If the lessons of history aren't learned, the path to the future is happenstance, at best.

But.

I have a problem with history in general, and Black History in particular, when it comes to the question of relevancy.

American history in general and Black history in particular are almost universally taught and learned from the point-of-view of the prevailing controllers of the status quo. 

In the case of Black History, that is why, for instance, that we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday every year, not with honoring his life-long fight for social and economic justice through his many penetratingly critical speeches and organizing efforts against the staus quo; but with condensing it all into portraying him--reducing him, actually--to a dream. We are reminded ad nauseum every year that Dr. King is most prominent in American history for saying, "I have a dream."  He is reduced to an historical figure who simply "had a dream" that one day the status quo will be different.  

That exercise, practiced almost universally--in the larger society and within the Black community--subverts Dr. King's relevancy in the on-going fight for a more just future.  Thus, the status quo of an injust present prevails.

It is the same with the entire history of the contributions of the Black race to the struggle for social and economic justice in America.  It is the same with the entire history of the contributions of the labor movement to this struggle; of the contributions of the farm workers under Caesar Chavez and others to this struggle; of the contributions of the women's suffrage movement and women's equal rights movement; of the contributions of the gay rights movement to the fight for social and economic justice in American society.

In each case, the histories are, for the very most part, taught and learned in such ways that their relevancy to present-day efforts to change the status quo towards a more just future are subverted.

So, for me, the question that the article asks, "Is Black History Month still relevant?"  can be answered, "Yes.  If we as Black individuals, families, organizations, institutions, and communities take it upon ourselves to start making our history relevant to our present-day efforts to forge a more socially and economically just future for our country."

What do you think?