Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

By DWIGHT LEWIS

Morgan Freeman, the Academy Award-winning actor, stirred the pot recently when he went on CBS News' 60 Minutes and told correspondent Mike Wallace that he finds Black History Month "ridiculous."

"You're going to relegate my history to a month?" Freeman said on the program last Sunday. "I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history." He went on to note that there are no white or Jewish history months.
 
I'm sure a lot of people are still discussing Freeman's comments, including those who think we still need a Black History Month and those who say, "The heck with it."

And, it's a discussion that's not new, not even in this space.

"One of the things about American history is that they omitted so much about blacks," Tom Feelings, a noted master artist told me while visiting Middle Tennessee in February 1997. "They've projected shame onto black people.

"The shame should be felt by the oppressors and not the victims. If you don't know the history, you keep blaming the history. Also, if you don't know your history, you don't know where you come from, and you're mired in confusion."

Surely, Morgan Freeman knows that, as intelligent as he is. And he did say that the history of his home state of Mississippi still bothers him to this day. "Forgive," he said, "But never forget."

Yet there was more to Mike Wallace's interview with Morgan Freeman that I've found interesting and worth discussing.

Wallace asked Freeman how can we get rid of racism.

"Stop talking about it. I'm going to stop calling you a white man. And I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. You wouldn't say, 'Well, I know this white guy named Mike Wallace.' You know what I'm sayin'?"

So we change the world in a day, huh? I wish it were that easy.

As I listened to Morgan Freeman, I couldn't help but pull out a newspaper clipping of an announcement about my mother's death that I had come across over the Thanksgiving holidays.

The article appeared in a mainstream Knoxville newspaper in April 1950. It gave my mother's name, when and where she died and listed her survivors. In addition, it told when and where her services would be and where she would be buried.

Although I have visited my mother's grave many times and know that she died from injuries suffered in a fire, I had never seen the newspaper clipping before.

The article made me a little emotional. But what got to me more was the fact that above her name was written : (Colored).

I suppose Morgan Freeman would say, "But that was in 1950." Yes, it was, but have we made enough progress in our society to really be colorblind?

As you consider that question, please allow me to share with you a little of what the former welfare father, ordained Baptist minister and Princeton Ph.D. Michael Eric Dyson wrote in his book, Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line (Addison-Wesley Publishing Inc., 1996):

"The ideal of a colorblind society is a pale imitation of a greater, grander ideal: of living in a society where our color won't be denigrated, where our skin will be neither a badge for undue privilege nor a sign of social stigma. Because skin, race and color have in the past been the basis for social inequality, they must play a role in righting the social wrongs on which our society has been built. We can't afford to be blind to color when extreme color consciousness continues to mold the fabric and form our nation's history.

"Color consciousness is why black churches continue to burn. Color consciousness is why Supreme Court justices bend over backward to repress the memory and present manifestation of racial inequality.

"But we can strive for a society where each receives his or her just due, where the past in all its glory and grief is part of the equation of racial justice and social equality. Then we won't need to be blind to color, which in any case is a most morbid state of existence.

Then we can embrace our history and our ideals with the sort of humane balance that makes democracy more than a distant dream."

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