An Intergenerational Reflection on Black History Month

In honor of Black History Month 2021, AUP students Monique Callender (33) and Karen Thomas (66) got together virtually for an intergenerational discussion about being Black in Paris, Black History Month, and what, if anything, has changed since renewed Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd last May.

Karen: Hi Monique! I’ll start things off. As a multiracial student in France, how do you relate to Black history?

Monique: I’ve learned so much more about Black history and Black American history in France. I wasn’t raised in a way that allowed me to really dive into Black history the way I have here. A’mari Bing-Way and her student club, Black and Abroad, helped me a lot. One of the revelations of the group early on was that most of the American Black people were not used to operating in mostly Black spaces, whereas the non-Americans were more used to being surrounded by people that looked like them.

Karen: Is Black history only for Black people?

Monique: I don’t even really like the term “Black history.” It’s all just history. Why do we have to separate out Black history from the rest of history? We haven’t been living in a vacuum alone. It’s because most of us have been taught a whitewashed version of history that leaves out Black stories and voices.

Karen: When I think about museums around the world being the repositories for history, like the Holocaust Museum in Israel and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, I find it hard to believe that a country like France, with such a renowned museum network, would not have a museum that more closely linked the history of France to its colonialism and its involvement in the slave trade in order to chronicle Black history. I don’t consider the Musée du Quai Branly as that link, and apparently neither do they. What do you think about all that? Have you been to the museum in DC?

Monique: I have not, because it opened just after I moved to Paris. I did the next best thing; I did a report on it during my first semester at AUP, so I know a little about how it came to be. I think what makes the museum so special is that it took much longer than it typically takes to create a museum of this type. There has never been a museum like it before. It’s not a whitewashed version of history. Families donated artifacts and heirlooms to really construct the narrative of what it means to be Black in America. I think it was really a work of love.

As far as France goes, I do find it fascinating that they don’t have much commemorating the Algerian war, for example, or any of their other colonial activities. I think it’s very obvious that they just don’t want to, because you can see in Germany, a neighboring country, what they’ve done with education surrounding the Holocaust. What do you think it will take for France to reckon with its colonial past?

Karen: I don’t think they will or have to. There is no residue or history on French soil that reminds them every day, like there is in North and South America.

Monique: Moving on from France, do you find that Black History Month 2021 has been more impactful than in previous years?

Karen: Let me first say that, from the way you posed the question, it’s clear in your mind there has been change. I would be interested to know your answer to this question too.

Monique: I do feel like this year is different from past Black History Months. Companies are trying to show that they’re paying attention. All the major streaming services are now trying to promote their Black content. That’s beneficial because the information is now out there, in people’s faces, and they’re reflecting on it, which they need to be doing.

Karen: Have people opened their eyes? Have they stayed open? Maybe those eyes were just caught in a blink on January 6, 2021, at the US Capitol in Washington DC. I think that Black History Month is so overshadowed by the political and health issues facing the United States and the world, that this may well have been the least celebrated Black History Month in history.

I wonder how and if history will even record Black Lives Matter? For me, it’s interesting to consider the BLM protests as a chapter in Black history. The movement has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. I understand why it is a monumental moment in your young life.

Monique: Do you think much has changed since the protests last summer?

Karen: Taking a look backward, it’s difficult to see change in the context of months, or one summer. I think about pregnant Black mothers in Africa who jumped into the Atlantic Ocean to drown with their unborn babies, or be eaten by sharks, rather than give birth to children who would live as slaves. The Smithsonian African American Museum in DC did a poignant job of portraying that scene. When I visited the slave castles in Ghana where slaves were held to be packaged on ships and sent to their destiny across the Middle Passage, those scenes reverberated in a way I could have never imagined. The eight minutes of the policeman’s knee on George Floyd’s neck must have felt like the eight weeks that slaves in French and Portuguese slave cargo ships had to endure to cross the Atlantic. Black lives mattered differently, then and now, to those enslaved and those engaged in the slavery.

While BLM protested Black lives being taken through gun violence, I would offer that bullets have only become the substitute for ropes that lynched innocent Black men across this country over the course of the 20th century. Murder by bullet is the new lynching, and it continues to go unanswered and unpunished. 

BLM in my mind is another Civil Rights movement seeking justice in the streets.  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King fought for relief, seeking legislative and legal protection. It is crystal clear that after January 6 and the events at the US Capital, this is still only a dream.

Monique: I do think that, due to Covid-19, more people have started paying attention to how Black people are treated in America. People are alone, they’re reflecting, and a lot of information is coming their way. I think some people were deeply troubled by the things they didn’t know about, or had willfully ignored, and they were confronted with it. I have noticed that people are taking the time to educate themselves.

Black History is more than a month!