Black History Month

Did you pay attention to the legitamet to do about yet another reporter saying something stupid about a famous person that came off very prejudice? The most recent (and there seem to be so many) that I know of is a female sports reporter who made a comment about young golfers needing to lynch TWoods to get ahead in the sport. This links to an article about it. When my dad came to visit he talked about how originally, after the reporter apologized he thought "no biggie, no offense meant, TWoods forgave" and then he listened in on a tv news talk show discussing this issue and an African American comedian made the point that it is a Big Deal - that it was only 30/40 years ago really that lynching African Americans was a common occurance in the United States, acts like these are part of AA recent history and heritage and racism is still very much a part of all of our lives. The violence the comment described can easily be brushed off as a miss use of words, but that it was used is still disappointing and disrespectful toward TWoods - regardless of a lack of malicious intent.

Now - dad went on to ask what we are doing to make sure that we are connecting Babers to his African American heritage. He is surrounded by white people everywhere we go. Our family is completely white - there is no getting around that - and at the age he is now he doesn't notice, but eventually he will and we need to make certain that we are doing our best to connect him to everything that will help him become a strong person - which means understanding his heritage. We seek out groups, schools and diversity, but we also need to make sure diversity is in our home, our books, our movies, our stories, our playmates and our history. We celebrate so many things based in white history - we will celebrate our countries black history by celebrating Black History Month and learning about a new AA person who has made a difference in our countries history. Honestly, this is as much for Babers as it is for Spidey and SuperStar.

The kids are going to help come up with names that we can post information about each day - but we are going to help too by looking for names that you won't readily know. So come back and see if you learn something about your countries history through the month of February........