Banal Black History Month

As Black History Month comes to a close, I bitterly recall the first time I was ever profiled and followed in a convenience store. I was around 11 years old,  visiting family in England, and it would be the first profiling of many. At first, it felt like a little game. I wasn’t sure why this sulky, rotund man had a perpetual crease in between his brows, and why his eyes continued to follow me from aisle to aisle. He was of a slightly darker skin tone, maybe Middle Eastern or Eastern European, so I myopically assumed it was a cultural difference; maybe it wasn’t rude to stare at people where he came from. 

It started to feel less like a game only when I noticed that he was getting closer, imposing an intimidating stance at the very end of the next aisle with his arms crossed, just waiting for me to say or do the wrong thing. 

Black History Month looks different for everyone. It may look different especially for people residing in the U.S. because of its even richer history. But as someone whose first exposure to racism happened outside of North America, at a time when I had no tangible knowledge of my people’s history, my relationship with this commemoration is a little different. This is especially because I migrated from Nigeria (which, at the time, did not teach history at all), to the overwhelmingly homogenous population of Dublin, Ireland.

I was forced to learn about my history through direct exposure to explicit racism. This was difficult, because I initially didn’t understand or recognize racism. I sensed hostility, like when eyes followed me through a grocery store, leading to eventual accosting, or when mean kids tried to put a spin on the pronunciation of my home country that sounded like a slur, but I did not understand what or why. I was forced to quickly learn about my history when my mother would warn my brother and I not to ever put our hoods up, no matter how cold we got. Not to ever “act suspicious,” even if we were just children being ourselves, or not to expect the same treatment as our peers for dated reasons that would disadvantage us pervasively. I was unceremoniously slammed head first into the world of name calling from random people I met, acquaintances, adults and even children at the playground.

Slowly but surely, I would come to thoroughly learn about my history, through my own curiosity and research, and through hinted references and comments at school. I would learn to shrink myself to adapt. To be inoffensive and to avoid cold, harsh gazes. To be careful when making friends, and when meeting their parents, just in case they still reasoned like people from previous generations. And when I moved from Ireland to Canada, the type of racism I experienced would only evolve.

For a long time, I had a genuine fear and apprehension when meeting new people. I faced racism from people across a wide spectrum of races and ethnicities, even my own, and reached a point where I started to associate the state of being black as a bad dream.

One of the few times I tried to articulate this insecurity to a white person, I was immediately hit with a rebuttal: “Don’t you think it’s racist to think like that? How do you think we feel?”

I was younger, and too stunned to say anything back. I remember feeling bad and trying to come up with all sorts of explanations in my head, but nothing made sense. Now that I’m older, I know not to immediately shun this defensiveness from other races as guilt, because while that may have something to do with it, the real motivation behind this form of thinking isn’t just that. 

It is genuine, unabashed, persecution. It is righteous fury born from years of endured slogans about diversity, equity and inclusion. About affirmative action and black voices and black lives mattering. People blank when they hear these things. They are incapable of listening to the explanation that follows, no matter how much reason it may have, because to them, it’s not about that. It’s about optics. It’s about the constant homage to a disturbing time in human history, and the belief that the attention it receives is disproportionate or excessive. This “woke pandering,” to many, is not only old news or a thing that should be left in the past, but a new form of racism- the beginning of the erasure of, or at the very least, the attempted disenfranchisement of non-blacks and white people. 

It is impossible to express the level of shame that becomes instilled in the identity of a black child after facing experiences such as profiling, or repetitive, persistent bullying. It may seem minute on a grander scale, but it has a significant cumulative effect. Of course, when I tried to express this experience to certain types of white or non-black people who hadn’t experienced it, there was an urge to skew it and invalidate my story, as though the mere acknowledgement of my suffering were a personal affront to them. They couldn’t understand that the two were completely different, and that one carried centuries of weight and meaning with it. 

People may hear my story, and stress that this is why the celebration of Black History Month is important and even necessary, but it doesn’t feel like a celebration. The pain and wins of black history have become yet another issue that have been commodified and pummeled to death to absolve corporations from broader wrongdoings. Everything has become a matter of optics. A false display and affectation that is completely hollow, forced and disingenuous; trivializing Black History and making it look like a joke.

I have never once benefited from affirmative action. I haven’t been a “diversity” hire at a job that I was underqualified for. I have worked hard for every penny I’ve ever earned. In fact, it is likely that my last name still does more harm than good when I am searching for a job. I don’t come from money and I recognize this to be an even greater hierarchical divider than race or gender might be. But people don’t see this, and more than that, they don’t believe it. Black History Month is exceptionally good at reinforcing the climate of white nationalist rage that a lot of North Americans harbour. Instead of doing what you might think it set out to accomplish- further educating people, or calling for them to pay more attention to the ramifications of white supremacy- it does the opposite.

White people who want to erase or escape this history will use the celebration of Black History Month as ammo in their argument that the world wants to speedily erase them. That all their life has become is being maligned, snubbed, rejected and punished. That they are demonized and vilified for something their ancestors did. Or worse, they forgo basic human dignity and dismiss this history as “standard human nature,” or natural selection. In doing so, they completely negate some of the most horrific, inhumane and undignifying acts of slavery, the significance of generational trauma, and the frameworks that have continued to last since.

This Black History Month, I particularly didn’t feel it. I’m never sure what the point is- if I’m supposed to feel empowered, celebrated, or made to believe I’m being given an equal chance. I especially don’t feel the love from companies who spout the same repetitive PR friendly drivel that is nothing but verbose. It means nothing to me, and less to others. Those who are truly curious about this kind of history will seek it out, like I had to, and those who don’t care will feel bombarded, and worse, driven to dangerous corners that validate their feelings of insulation.

In principle, celebrating the triumphs and tribulations of black history is a benevolent idea, but in practice, it is done in a way that often makes it to be a spectacle; garish, uninspired and obligatory.   

Still, denouncing the celebration of the triumphs and tribulations of black history as “woke pandering” is similar to expressing dismay at the noble acknowledgement of remembrance day, or any other holiday that commemorates tragedy. Unfortunately, the celebration of Black History month conflates real life history and current struggles of black people with meaningless and absurd commodification. 

I recognize that even if these issues were to be fixed, there will still be unhappy people. If it were a mere day as opposed to a month of acknowledgement, for some, this would still be too much. It’s important to note that there will always be members of society who view any form of advancement for minorities as regression. The mere idea of minorities being protected by newer laws- hoping to minimize behaviour like hate crimes and hate speech- are often viewed as an impingement on the rights of others to their free speech; an attack on them. 

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t celebrate ourselves. I’m not saying that Black History Month creates  bigots, because if the acknowledgement of minorities is enough to send someone into a spiral, they already had bigoted tendencies to begin with. However, it is the lack of originality and thought that is often put into this celebration that is detrimental. It is the way it is handled with repetitiveness, bombardment, disingenuity, and lack of care, so that it can be used as a marketing ploy or a smokescreen. The assumption that we must be advantaged just because we now receive meaningless graphics or corporate slogans, and an affected, insincere head nod in our general direction during the month of February is laughable.