Freeman Criticizes Black History Month

[Firecat]

Article...


Thoughts?

[///M]

I agree.

And cot damn, if you're going to have a Black History Month, atleast make it a month that isn't the shortest of the year.

[zenkidori]

I agree with Mr. Freeman.

[BlaRo]

Same here. Morgan Freeman is cool.

It's reverse racism; I think it's like pandering. "You guys whine so much about civil rights and crap like that! Here, have a month where we can talk about yourself. Now shut up and leave us alone.*"

(*Disclaimer: I'm being sarcastic.)

[Urban Sombrero]

I've always thought that. I agree totally. Everyone needs to stop pulling the race card, it doesn't work nowadays.

[Kansai22]

I don’t think you all understand why the month was created. When a people are the majority it is easy for them to forget about the minority. I believe a lot of racism has to do with this. I don’t think most people are consciously racist. I believe it is a subconscious mind set that people fall into.

Think about it this way. If you are white and you are creating a history book with a limited amount of space you may leave out black history because it is not important to you. A white American may not see the significance of Martian Luther King to American history. To them Supreme commander Macarthur may be a more important person and they will leave out people like Martian Luther King in order to make room for important whites in history without thinking about it. Think about how easy it is for whites to make a movie/television series and leave blacks completely out of the movie/television series. Seinfeld was a prime example of this. I don’t think the producers/writers consciously made this effort; I truly believe that it was a result of this unconscious racism that results from being the majority. In a perfect world where no racism exists I believe we could do away with black history month. In-fact I completely agree with what Morgan Freeman said creating the label Black History Month makes this part of American history seem as if it is inferior to the rest of American history. So therefore I have come to the judgment that at this time we can not afford to erase Black history month or risk losing this part of history from the American classroom forever.

As for the comment of “race card”, and “Reverse Discrimination”. I believe that these things do exist in society but I see a trend of this becoming a covert or sugar coated way for the racist to spew their consciously racist views.

[zenkidori]

So blacks don't write history books?

[Kansai22]

Whites write the majority of history books because they are the majority. They also approve what is in them publish and purchase them for the educational system.

[zenkidori]

I think you're nuts if you think it would be easy for a white person to replace Dr. King with Macarthur. Ask most white school kids who Macarthur was and I bet it takes them a while to answer, wheras Dr. King is HUGELY important to American history, black or white.

Sienfeld is subconciously racist?

reverse discrimination is racism.

[jeffy777]

I agree with Freeman as well. Black, white; we're all the same on the inside.

[Firecat]

Seinfeld is anything but a prime example of that. There were a lot of black characters on the show. Maybe not the main character, but who says the cast has to be diverse?

I do partly agree with Morgan Freeman. I mean, he says that history is history, doesn't really matter if it's white or black....that's the ideal situation, but is it the case? American history can be very general, is there really a problem with seperating it and saying "this is african-american history...this is italian-american history...this is irish-american history"....each group has a unique take on "American history"...no?

I also think affirmative action (in some instances) is necessary, although it needs to be fixed a little....