Black History....What?

Once again, the prestigious month of October is upon the culturally defined minority in the UK, a month where Black History has been given a month to revisit times gone by, with an African cultural, and ideological focus, a month where artists will capture Afrocentrism in the spontaneous dance and movement of a brush, a month where ‘Black History Month’ talks will converse about the association with the cultural ideology that is Afrocentricity, singers will holler kith and kin song, dancers will hop, ballet and wiggle their jive, comedians will make jokes under a unified banner, and self-respect will wear Kenta cloth on a Monday while other philosophies will be based on the idea that African people, should re-assert a sense of agency in order to achieve sanity, especially in October.

The rest; the growing unrest, very much pre-occupied with Black History Month being as relevant as an African-American-inspired ideology, a creed that manifests an affirmation of Black in a Eurocentric dominated society, and fundamentally when revolutionary’s child has never been happy with the prescribed relationship, for the wearers of the Kenta cloth, every day, such reaffirmation of a peoples fundamental, in October, for the October reason always doing more to circumscribe self-esteem than it claims to give, back.

The precursor to Black History Month was fashioned in 1926 in the United States, when historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History proclaimed the second week of February to be "Negro History Week”, this particular, pronounced week preferred because it corresponded with the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, February 12, and Frederick Douglass on February 14, both of which dates Black communities had celebrated together since the late 19th century. Roll on modern-day UK, and the everyday preoccupation with the identity of race, regardless of the fact that Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation did not complete the task of eradicating slavery, and Frederick Douglass’s tale is essentially one of the rebellious slaves that done a lot more than get God and get free, for the unapologetic rebel diviners, and the growing number of “finally realised”, Black History Month ultimately reinforces the distress of a peoples entire culture tarnished with the perpetual brush of slavery, and a history stripped from the essence of their hearts, mind’s, and soul, an unbearably painful reminder of what was lost what one never knew they had, a loss that is proved to be part of the reason one might be spiritually and socially worse off now.

Fundamentally, between the celebration of a rich and vibrant Black culture, one that reaffirms roots and ultimately deals primarily with conceptualizing a glorified heritage, in terms of distinctly African, and it’s black self-determination, self-realisation, and all things Kumbaya in a pseudo-utopic, post-slavery world, the crux is no celebration, over the period of a month can shine a light on an acrimonious shade toning profound, colour-coded scripture; the nitty-gritty between the lines detail looking like the “elephant in the room” problem. Despite the focuses on the history of Black, and its African, in response to global attitudes about Black people and their historical contributions, deep within the psyche of the baton carried Black culture, no celebrated implication has ever been able to separate the celebration from a bondage still intact, essentially the growing unrest not celebrating s**t, not when the unrest that grows is here, and today’s look to the heavens see a murky raven sombre hovering among the pitch- black, of which resembles a slow sooty starless life, all very tragic, all very poetically afflicted, and yet still all very acutely relevant.

Consequently, caught-up in the rigmarole of a culturally entangled definition, while racially encrypted murders are captioned on 24hr news, and beautiful Black youth are knifing each other to death, and racism still exists, and lack of self-esteem still persists, and ‘nigger-nigga’-negro’ still can’t decide who they’re talking about, a Black History Month, celebrated in October for the October reason, more and more self-evident becomes the celebrating of a remembrance rooted in layered dynamics of an emancipation, as yet not emancipated, leaving Black pride, 365 day pride more proud than ever in advocating the object of affection is at best misplaced, and at its worst self-defeating.

For anybody celebrating Black History Month, on any level of consciousness understands it involves an African diaspora, it involves the principle of “we shall overcome because we came from more,” and being black is of the essence when such real meaning is of African descent, and with the name Africa given to the continent by the Romans, also called: Kemet, Corphype, Olympia, Libya, Egupe, Hesperia, Ortegia, Ethiopia, Ta Merry and Sedan, the ancient name for Africa before it was Hellenised "Akebu-Lan"; which means "Mother of Mankind" or "Garden of Eden, it is the African essence of Black people downplayed or discredited as part of the legacy of colonialism, and slavery's pathology of "writing Africans out of history, and come 2017 still the impetus and native need to celebrate the image of a beautifully afflicted rebel, when celebrating history for its Black sake is where the object of affection should, and must ultimately lie?