Black History Month revival

Look out, it's Black History Month! It's because I respect its original purpose that I sound a cautionary alarm.

It was conceived to elevate the nation with an awareness of the vast and vital intergenerational contributions of African Americans to the shared legacy of national greatness. Not just in pop entertainment, brawny sports and community leadership, but also in every area from opera to the hardest of sciences.

But narrow focus risks having the effect of marginalizing and trivializing their consummate productivity. That's hardly a step up from the historical neglect, denial or ignored record of achievement. 

Routinized celebrations have robbed Black History Month of some of its urgent focus and luster.

It has also, to a degree, been manipulated and co-opted by ideologues who act as though they have a monopoly on a grasp of the chronicles of the American Black experience and the lessons to be learned from it. Ideology-based promotion is like an opportunistic infection that particularly and perennially affects the worthiest of causes and hijacks their radiance. 

Black History Month should be driven by a universal, not unilateral agenda.

Black people have evolved a highly sensitive and reliable intuition for detecting when they're being talked down to. They also have a keen nose for the hypocrisy of some self-styled "progressives," who kiss up to them while making sure that none of them get approved by the admission committees of their co-op boards. 

There's a lot of camouflage and faux sympathy among some of the professed champions of civil rights who like to flaunt their "equity" bona fides.

It can be a ruse to throw African Americans off the scent of those who advocate for them publicly and at least passively plot them privately. The garment of "solidarity" may be part of the ensemble of the Emperor's New Clothes. Elitism can be threadbare, nude and given to backslapping and empty, compelled adulation.

Sloganeering and pumping fists and then retreating to gated communities, doesn't pass empathy muster.

The contributions of African Americans should be seriously taught and understood all year. Not a one-month's catechism feast.

Malcolm X, a "mixed bag" like most unapologetic geniuses, was hugely cognizant of the false motives of radicals and "humanitarians" who were obstacles to Black self-determination. Today we hear unremitting echoes of lip service from elected officials about African Americans of inner cities who are besieged by crime and economic paralysis, but the gas-powered politicians are re-elected in perpetuity until they're food for worms.

New Year's Day is traditionally a time for resolutions. For the most part, it's a joke. But Black History Month should be observed with the earnest resolution for African Americans to discover and rediscover who their friends are and who their false friends are. 

Some of the latter will be among their most vociferous, never camera-shy, "advocates.”

African Americans, like everybody else, do not have a monolithic outlook on the world. They have not sold out their identity, their culture or their honor. They must not fear offending the mainstream or fringes of any community, including their own.

Last year, I had a frightful blowup with a childhood friend because I noted the banishment of Dr. Ben Carson from the commonly referenced African American luminaries. My friend practically shivered with repulsion. He didn't consider Carson a genuine African American because of his political affinities.

Ben Carson came from a home not merely broken but shattered. His neighborhood was violent and destitute and unsparing. But he became a brain surgeon at an unheard-of age, the youngest director of neurosurgery at John Hopkins Hospital, and held professorships in oncology, pediatrics and plastic surgery.

He also led a 70-member surgical team in a 22-hour operation that was the first successful separation of conjoined twins who were attached at the back of their heads. Additionally, to stop severe epileptic seizures, he perfected the protocol for removal of half a patient's brain.

Not too shabby, eh?

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is another African American ostracized for his philosophy. Arguably he betrayed the Constitution, but to call him a traitor to his race is zealotry. Uncle Tom-ism is a multi-partisan phenomenon. They come from all directions and entrenchments. 

Some in camouflage. Some with party favors.

Until African Americans are regarded and treated as individuals, rather than appetizers for wolves in sheep's clothing to prey and capitalize upon,  they will be in cultural servitude. I know garbage-mouthed people who curse almost indiscriminately, but they're afraid to call an African American a "sonofabitch,”  which they would not hesitate to call a Bulgarian, because they're afraid of being called a bigot.

To inhibit and make even the most unattractive of people self-conscious about expressing themselves openly, within reasonable constraints of discretion and free speech, of course, may drive resentment underground, mentally, and ignite re-entrenched racism. 

It is better to let Black people defend themselves than to conceal from them what pig-headed rogues may be spouting among themselves in their crooked associations.

African Americans have a right to be mavericks. To be everything and anything, for better or worse, as we all are. If we don't accept that, we are subconsciously relegating them to sub-humanity, no matter how vociferously we defend them and their organizations in public forums and cocktail parties.

Unless and until we can both idolize and loathe an African American under the same criteria and circumstance as we do everybody else, they are in effect pariahs, regardless of civil rights laws and best intentions. 

Their pride in selfhood is not contingent upon anybody's seal of approval. Given the ordeals of their history, they should demand that society's consciousness be raised, not merely propped up.

To stand their ground they must stand on their own feet. They will never fall.

Since last year's Black History Month, Affirmative Action and DEI have been under attack. The Supreme Court and President Trump have each delivered mortal blows of political and judicial electrocution. But mortality, in this case, need not be permanent. They may be revived through reinvention. 

There are ways around extinction. 

As long as the equal protection laws on the books are strictly monitored, African Americans will be a definitive force in the improvement of civilization. Evidence speaks eloquently for itself. They have shown they can pull themselves up from their bootstraps even when they're shoeless.

They have overcome. But overcoming is a work in progress. Always will be.

There's no arguing against the pristine intent of DEI's core principles. But have they played into the hands of opponents of African American sovereignty who have an interest and an uncontrollable itch, in keeping them subjugated as an underclass. 

By casting aspersions on the legitimacy of earned credentials and illustrious achievement by spreading the false perception that African Americans were given a free ride on the DEI Express, they seek to keep the lie viable at least in the back of minds of intractable ignoramuses.

Black History Month is more than a calendar set-aside. It is an all-weather, all-seasons covenant with truth and moral duty.