For Black History Month

[reverendjeremiah]

And you're telling me that having a "Black History month", which we already have and which is obviously fucking flawed (seriously, do your kids learn anything extra? I didn't. My sister didn't. My brother's still in school...didn't.) is going to solve this?

Strange that your family learned nothing from it. I learned quite a bit from it. I learned enough to be able to openly question my fathers racism at the age of 16 from it. So why didnt your family not learn something from it? Did they not pay attention to the curriculum in school? Did they fight against it instead of actually studying...I dont know...why didnt they learn anything from it?

I'm not arguing that Jews have it better now - but I will take your point and tell you: they did it without a history month.

If I were to be asked "do Jews have it better now?". Of course I would be a bit cautious about answering, pointing out that I dont have all the facts in front of me, but generally I would say "yes, they are quite successful in this country compared to their small population percentage". Then again, it is usually easier to hide someones Jewishness as opposed to hiding the fact that you are black. A jew can easily claim to be something else, passing off as a white Christian sometimes if they can watch the Hebrew accent of course, Americanize their name.... a black person cant "whiten" their skin to hide their minority :-D . Same thing with atheists. Atheists are getting better in America without a history month, but they too can easily hide their atheism. Blacks cannot hide their blackness.

Can you see the difference now?

My dad is a racist asshole - I'm not. I was educated with an emphasis on international scale that didn't require we take a break for different months - often we were reading or learning about different cultures at the same time so similarities could be pointed out.

Not sure how they ran curriculum where you went to school, but all through my highschool, and even during my 5 year electrical apprenticeship, they used "focus months". This month we focus on capacitors. Next month we focus on Inductance.

Maybe it's just a belief, but I do believe in it firmly, that a better grasp of education in general would eliminate racism, rather than devoting cultural months to races or religions.

Of course better education would help end racism. It helped end mine. I am proof that education HELPS destroy racism. It isnt the only thing that does it, and sometimes racism is so ingrained by the family that there is no getting rid of it...but it does help.

The thing is though, you argue that education would eliminate racism, yet you would get rid of black history month? Im having a hard time understanding what you are trying to say?