Why have special history months?

I recently learned that March is Women’s History Month. Since I am still finishing up my Native America Heritage reading for November 2012, and then will need to start my Black History month reading for February 2013, I am not sure if I am going to observe this one. My next round of reading will involve women’s issues, though it is not specifically historical, so maybe that will count. Also, just now I wondered, and looked, and found that May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

Regardless of my own issues with keeping up (which I could probably resolve if I would pick just one or two books instead of four or five plus supplemental video), obviously, I find value in doing this. There are people who don’t, and I want to take a moment to address that.

I have recently come across two specific complaints. One was that we shouldn’t keep dividing people into groups. We should just study history. The other was using exaggeration to point out how ridiculous it was by asking why stop there? Why not months for each country?

To be fair, if people would make a point of reading books about all of the different countries there could be a lot of good derived by that. However, the purpose of these months is to get a better understanding of our own history.

There are many noble and courageous acts in thehistory of the country, and there is also lying, theft, and genocide. That’s uncomfortable, but the point of looking at that isn’t to make anyone feel guilty for things that other people have done. The point needs to be to understand where we are now. That’s what history does. It provides us with context and it can help us predict how things will turn out and guide us to better outcomes.

If we were truly a post-racial society, we might not need that so much. If you think we are there, I refer you to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Pretending that race doesn’t matter when it does still matter has horrible consequences, and if you truly do want peace, and equality, then you need to have your eyes open to various means of oppression.

Here are some recent items that make me feel that awareness months need to be more widely observed:

Philadelphia Magazine’s “Being White in Philly” article
CPAC
Bloomberg Businessweek’s cover illustration on the housing recovery

Zerlina Maxwell getting rape threats due after suggesting that we should tell men not to rape.

Female debaters getting rape threats for having opinions.

“Mike & Molly” joking about Indian alcoholism
Poppy Harlow’s first reaction to the Steubenville conviction being sympathy for the rapists.

So, what are some of the things that we can get from studying the histories of specific groups?

One thing that I would hope we can get is some empathy. I was recently reading about generational trauma, where you have psychological trauma that was visited on one generation showing up in their descendents, because you get a mindset where there is this background of horror and hopelessness that is hard to shake. It was something that came up with Holocaust survivors, but also with many American Indians.

This makes sense. Without the gas chambers, there was still the vilification, there was deliberate extermination, there was isolation and disruption, there was the constant loss every time they would get settled, and then someone would want the new land, plus frequent attempts at erasing the identity which involved beatings, loss of language, and separation from family. So when you read Sherman Alexie and the problem with the reservation is the lack of hope, then it kind of makes sense.

Reading the histories can make people think a little, so that when someone mentions Frederick Douglas forgiving his former owner, that instead of saying “For giving him shelter and food?”, that maybe they will realize that taking people who were feeding and clothing themselves, and kidnapping them into forced labor and separation from families, is not really a favor. (No, that’s not the only reason that CPAC made the list.)

I would also hope that increased study could give a better perspective on what different lifestyles are like. First of all, you should know when you have it good, and maybe part of that is knowing about these backstories of abuse and poverty, and also the genetics and heredity and dietary changes that have caused alcoholism to be a real problem for Native Americans, you don’t turn that into a cheap joke.

One thing that I really believe about humor is that it works among equals, and it works to joke against power, but power joking against the powerless is nasty, and “only a joke” is not a defense for that.

There’s another aspect that has become clear to me recently. When we talk about the importance of having black dolls, for example, or that you can see minorities represented on television, we generally look at the importance of that for the minority. It is important for people of color to see themselves represented, but it occurs to me that it is also important for white people to see people of color represented, and not just fulfilling stereotypes.

Let’s go back to that “White in Philly” article. The concern was that white people were feeling like a minority and yet afraid that if they talked about it they would be considered racist. However, at least one referred to black people just sitting on their porches smoking weed, which does sound really racist. However, it is easy to believe racist stereotypes if that is all you see. When you are introduced to many black people, and Mexicans, and every other ethnic group, it is harder to hold these stereotypes.

Now, part of the history that we have built up is that even without segregation being legal it often exists in de facto form, because we live in neighborhoods and attend schools and work in businesses that aren’t very diverse. However, books can introduce us to people too, and we can widen our minds that way, which will perhaps prepare us for actual contact.

I have one more point for today, and I am not even sure it fits in here, but again, I’ve been thinking about it. It’s about our own histories.

One of the books that I read this round was about local tribes, and so there was a lot that was familiar there. Some of the events are things I actually remember, and there are familiar names, and places. One thing is that I now know why the casinos are in Grand Ronde and Lincoln City – how that land was originally selected for the reservations, and how it got divided later, and what went into putting them there.  This book was about the Siletz, who have the Lincoln City casino, Chinook Winds.

I was just at the Grand Ronde (that’s the name of the location and of the tribe) casino, Spirit Mountain, a few months ago. One of the musicians we were going to see was a member of another tribe, and one of the people in my group had just learned that she had Native American ties as well.

In her case, there were issues with family separation and divorce and religious isolation that led to there being a lot of things that she didn’t know about her background, and was starting to learn. If her reasons are a bit more unique, her situation is not.

How many children who were sent to boarding schools and forbidden to speak their native tongues never made it back to their family? How many children who got moved into foster care got out of the system without knowing who they were any longer? Many things that were done through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, through slavery, and through other social services have been disastrous for families, and therefore disastrous for society (which then tends to be kind of quick to condemn the families for being broken).

I believe knowing personal history is important, as well as knowing our collective history, and we find bits of ourselves in the larger study.

This is already lengthy, and coming at it from a completely different perspecitve there is still more value in these reading months. So, I believe tomorrow I am going to cover my recent reading, and then Wednesday we will look from that other perspective, and I will try and blow some minds.