On Friday, October 27, the Argus published a Wespeak by Evan Carp. In this Wespeak, Mr. Carp asserted that (if I may paraphrase) recognitions such as “gay pride parades” and “black history months” are counterproductive, because they contribute to the segregation between, say, straight people and gay people, or black people and white people. Mr. Carp claimed that “Gays, blacks, Hispanics, white folks, men and women are all just PEOPLE, and having ‘pride parades,’ ‘history months’ and ‘awareness weeks’ over such truly insignificant distinctions is what encourages racism and prejudice.” This is obviously a dangerous assertion, especially in today’s world, and especially on Wesleyan’s campus. Because of this, I am sure that many people will be writing Wespeaks to argue against Mr. Carp. Some will use rationalization, some will use psychological study, and some will use anger to thwart Mr. Carp’s arguments. However, I would like to use a different method to respond to Mr. Carp. I would like to agree with him.
Now, before everyone gets red in the face that more Carp-esque Wespeaks are being written, let me explain myself. I agree with Mr. Carp in that distinctions such as Black History Month are counterproductive, but I understand the motivation behind creating it in the first place. I just think that the Black History Month Solution was a horrible way to help the Blacks Aren’t Being Recognized in History Problem. This problem, in short, was that blacks were invisible in history; the stories of our past were full of white men doing this, white men achieving that, white men inventing such.
So what did we do? Instead of simply integrating blacks into the history curriculum (and I use the term “curriculum” loosely, to refer to not only the classroom, but to society as well), we continued to segregate them by giving them their own month. This way, students who learn about black history, instead of being reminded how much of an equal role blacks played in the past, are constantly reminded that something is different and worth separating about blacks—if this were not the case, why do they need their own month? If, at the very beginning of this whole revolution, the powers-that-be had sat down and, instead of creating Black History Month, had simply started writing black history into history (see next paragraph for a comment on this word choice) so that no one could tell them apart, the problem would have fixed itself long ago. People would be learning about blacks as they learn about everyone else, and the segregation would be gone.
A brief comment on my telling phrase “…black history into history….” I comment on this because I wrote it without even thinking about it, and then suddenly realized its significance. Notice how, without even thinking about it, I have separated “black history” and “history.” Shouldn’t “black history” just be a subset of “history?” There should be no distinction. But the fact that “black history” has been separated from “history” in my mind for so long—because of Black History Month—has caused me to subconsciously separate the two. You have just witnessed the very problem that Mr. Carp explained in action.
I believe that in order for society to achieve what it has been trying to achieve for so, so long—acceptance of any gender, race, sex, creed, etc.—that eventually everyone needs to take down the gay pride banners, abandon the notion of Black History Month, stop using Affirmative Action when it involves acceptance based on ethnicity instead of economic status, and cease any other source of special recognition for a certain group of people. I believe that eventually everyone needs to be treated as PEOPLE, instead of as a member of a certain group. And I believe now is a pretty good time for this to start. I understand the motivation behind pride banners and recognition months, but until they are eliminated, society will never become what it is yearning to become.
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