So Fresh and So Green | Madam Toussaint on Going Green, Art, Hip Hop, and Politics

I like this. From Marvel Comic’s Truth: Red, White & Black by Bob Morales and Kyle Baker.

“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” ~Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History”, founder of Negro History Week, a precursor to Black History Month

Every year Black History Month brings up a lot of issues for me. After a few recent conversations I decided to address those issues this entire month!

Firstly even as a child I felt Black History Month was poorly taught. Maybe that’s a given if you’ve ever had to sit through an awkward white teacher trying to make a classroom full of Black kids understand the need for a Civil Rights Movement or benefits of slavery.

Not to be left out, I also take issue with Black adults who don’t offer Black children the same rehashed Black History stuff in sporadic bouts with even less context than what is offered in school. Saying things like “People didn’t march on Washington for you to have your pants sagging” is absurd. “Young people need to read more” also useless unless you’re willing to offer a serious reading list a comment like that should be left out of conversations with young people.

The History of Black people on this planet is too important a subject to be so mishandled every year. Dragging out the old MLK “I Have A Dream” speech for children to see once a year is a criminal. Shaving that man’s life down to one speech does us all an injustice everywhere.

They call this guy “The Teacher”.

Here’s a few of my issues with BHM itself:

All this talk of BHM and more of my peers learned who George Washington Carver was than Carter G. Woodson who started BHM in the first place.

Why does George Washington Carver get to be so popular for all the wrong things?

We were allowed for far too long to perpetuate the idea that BHM was the shortest month of the year because Black people just can’t catch a break in this white man’s country. As kids I doubt we were ever taught how BHM got to be in February in the first place. (more…)

I heard this speech again for the first time in December. This is Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” (1967).

Dr. King first delivered this sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he served as co-pastor. On Christmas Eve, 1967.

There was always something missing to me in his ideas about non violence and why it was not a strategy or a tactic but a lifestyle and a worldview.

Dr. King’s birthday and federal holiday land in the beginning of the year, just as many are slowly abandoning their New Year’s resolutions. Well before New Years I resolved to let go of grudges and anger long held inside for persons that had no idea that’s what I was doing all this time.

But how? Surely it was easier said and resolved than done. In this speech I found an answer that apparently I wasn’t ready to hear before.

Often Dr. King’s sharp and analytical mind is overlooked in favor of a “Santa Clausified”, sanitized preacher form Georgia who made one good speech.

In “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” he explains the difference between like and love, why we should love, forgive and work towards peace. He offers us the opportunity to rethink “Peace on Earth, Good Will toward Men” as “peace within and peace without.”

An excerpt: (more…)