Black History Month

Today begins Black History Month, and I wanted to open a space for people to share resources — books, films, interviews, music, collections of poetry, art, blogs, speeches, links to events, anything explicitly associated with Black History Month or any content created by Black people that has been meaningful to you.

Head to comments with your recommendations!

As a white USian who grew up in a predominantly non-black community, Black history, especially as told by Black people, was largely concealed from me.

What Black history I did get, at school and at home, was almost exclusively filtered through the lens of white supremacy and white privilege — and I very nearly reached adulthood without ever encountering the idea that that was a problem.

It is a colossal problem that overwhelmingly white media get to shape the news, get to the tell the stories, get to choose whose voices are heard, get to define what Black lives look like, and get to redefine the effects of White Supremacy as Black Failure.

It is a problem in the historical record, and it is a problem in the record being created today. The Black perspective, the truth, was written out of history documented and controlled by white people, and it is critical that a diversity of Black perspectives are centered to avoid replication of the same silencing and whitewashed revisionism.

Pushing back against this erasure is especially urgent in the Age of Trump, a white supremacist president who has repeatedly engaged in overtly anti-Black rhetoric.

Black history is living history. To mark the beginning of this month, I want to reaffirm my commitment to supporting and amplifying the voices of Black people who are telling their stories, to regard them as authorities on their own lives and lived experiences, to listen to them and believe them, to respect Black people as the definitive sources of their own history.