Jan. 30, 2008 - Issue #641: Trashing Health Care Premiums
African History Month part education, part celebration
It’s African History Month again, and across the city and across the continent, folk are gearing up for education and celebration. But not everyone is celebrating, with some fighting over the name and others questioning whether the month still even needs to exist.
“All other peoples take up the other 11 months well,” says
Winston Hawthorne, an engineer and community activist with the National
Black Coalition of Canada (NBCC), a major force behind the annual events in
Edmonton. “We just need a little space for ourselves so we have time
to talk with ourselves, see ourselves and do for ourselves. We’re
behind in self-representation.”
African History Month, also called African Heritage Month and Black History
Month, began in the US in 1926 through the efforts of Carter G Woodson,
author of The Miseducation of the Negro, who established Negro History
Week. Originally an American-only observance, the concept has spread across
North America, but, according to Hawthorne, it hasn’t been
easy.
“It’s reaching the consciousness of people more than it has in
the past, but the progress has been slow,” he says. “We would
hope to have seen more collaboration and activism for the entire year
coming out of it. Several years ago the only organization would have been
[NBCC]. Now there are several, and individuals.”
This year in Edmonton, highlights of African History Month include two art exhibitions, the Afro-Quiz (a Jeopardy-like contest for children and youth on global African cultures, history, science and more), a fashion showcase, a tribute to Marvin Gaye, Taste of Africa and the Caribbean, two film festivals, banquets, awards and a Jubilee gospel concert featuring multiple Grammy-award winner Yolanda Adams.
An ongoing controversy exists among people of African descent that finds
few parallels among other peoples. Whereas East Asians rarely call
themselves “yellow” and people from Europe tend to cite their
individual national heritage (Irish, Italian, Polish) rather than the
self-description “White,” many New World Africans continue to
reject the term “African” in favour of the word
“Black.”
Hawthorne, whose Jamaican roots wind their way through England, employs
both terms and routinely wears beautiful shirts from West Africa as visible
embrace of the Motherland. He laments the rejection of Africa he’s
witnessed among New Worlders.
“The Caribbean [African], much like the North American African, does
not know the ground he stands on,” he says, “because his
education comes from the mainstream. Along with that education comes the
perception of Africa that is still negative. Among a lot of Black people,
we want to be seen as a winner, and the winner appears to be someone else,
sadly. Which is why we need African History Month.”
Hawthorne underplays the “anti-winner” story of Africa that is
the rule in the “his-tory” of the West. From movies to
schoolbooks, from newspapers to documentaries, “Africa” used to
mean grass skirts, “ooga-booga” and cannibals. Now the
stereotypes are more likely those of endless wars, bloated bellies,
misogyny and filth.
No less than French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared that Africans have
no history while—wait for it—he was at the University of Dakar
in Senegal addressing Senegalese. Yet across the border in Mali was fabled
Timbuktu, an ancient university city, home to thousands of manuscripts
which even now are being translated for their treatises on medicine,
astronomy, mathematics, literature and history.
Sarkozy was close to Nigeria, home to the Yoruba religion, a wellspring of divine inspiration which birthed the New World religions of Voudou (Haiti), Candomblé (Brazil) and Santeria (Cuba), with some 50 million adherents worldwide (far more than Judaism, the Baha’i faith and Mormonism combined). And what about near the Horn? Ethiopia with its castles and rock-hewn churches; Sudan with its hundreds of pyramids and a written text untranslated to this day; and Egypt itself, child of Sudan and, according to Cheikh Anta Diop (The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality?), Martin Bernal (Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization) and Richard Poe (Black Spark, White Fire: Did African Explorers Civilize Ancient Europe?), a robustly African population and civilization whose arts and sciences were the foundation for the Greek “miracle.” Writing itself, Science magazine has suggested, may have begun among those ancient Africans.
Hawthorne says that such generalizations, falsehoods and misconceptions
about the 54 countries of the African continent—and its thousands of
cultures, languages and religions and its millennia of
history—underscore the need for events like African History
Month.
“We will need African History Month so long as we fail to get over the legacy of history, until the Black peoples are standing on equal footing,” says Hawthorne. “It’s mainly up to us. We will need one until we’ve achieved equality.” V
Read Vue each week in February for columns focusing on African
History Month.
Events run Feb 1 - Mar 15
African History Month
www.nbccedmonton.org
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