Blackness is a political statement.
Blackness is blissful.
Blackness is under attack.
The executive branch of the federal government is spinning a yarn that Blackness is discriminatory against white people. Executive orders aim to erase Black curriculum and celebrations. Civil rights gains are targeted. All over the United States, big tech, corporations and other institutions are taking their cue by rolling back initiatives. “DEI” and “woke” are misused terms and weaponized into profanity as nasty as a four-letter swear word. Anti-Blackness seeps high and low, and cowardice is its companion.
Thus, Black History Month hits differently this year. The despair, angst and ire are palpable in the soul-crushing political climate we’re forced to endure. But I also choose not to shrink when I know my mere existence of living and breathing is an affront.
We must find a balm in these times. For me, it’s art, fellowship, cooking and reading.
Every year the Museum of Science and Industry hosts Black Creativity, a showcase of Black visual art. My family viewed the exhibition with close friends, breathing in all of the colors and collages. Then, time for a feast. Back at our home, I pulled the aptly-named “Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking” off my kitchen shelf: overnight-soaked buttermilk chicken fried in peanut oil in a cast iron skillet, spicy red beans and mustard greens with Cajun turkey tails. The buttermilk pie — a recipe handed down by my mother — crystallized like creme brulee. We laughed. We ate. We lamented.
The prolific Imani Perry’s new book “Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People” is a poetic reflection on the color blue as a symbol. I spent a weekend curled up with her prose. I returned to the Langston Hughes poem “I, Too” to make sense of systemic racism toward Black folk.
On President’s Day — oh, the irony! — we enjoyed Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica at the Art Institute. The collection of art, artifacts and memorabilia embraces global solidarity in the fight for emancipation.
One of the walls of the exhibit asked: What can it mean to be Black?
“The objects on view here explore Blackness as a construction, an unstable term, and a sonic and visual marker. They build upon ideas raised by the philosophical and cultural movement….
It all started on Chicago’s South Side
These works reveal that Blackness is fluid and dynamic, shaped by historical circumstances as well as subjective experiences. They show how the construct of race can be transformed from a tool for separation and domination into a vehicle of liberation.”
How fitting to read those words.
You can’t cancel Black History Month in a city like Chicago, even if you tried. The origins began here on the South Side. In 1915, Carter G. Woodson convened a group of thinkers at the Wabash YMCA to create the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. By February 1926, Negro History Week formed and decades later grew into Black History Month.
My third-grader attends a Chicago public school where Black history is honored in the classroom and hallways (ahem, our parent-designed door placed third for a tribute to George Crum, the man behind the potato chip!) For her assignment, my daughter chose to write a paper on the legendary Margaret Burroughs, founder of the South Side Community Arts Center and DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center. Chicago is Black history through and through.
Everyday we witness bullying into complicity in the new regime. The NFL decided it can’t end racism. The desire to dismantle education means assaulting colleges for helping non-white students feel a sense of belonging on campus. The man in charge of the nation’s health once floated the idea of removing Black children from their parents and homes to live at a “center” for wellness.
Celebrating Black History Month this year is urgent in a way I’ve never experienced. We need to gather and honor. No executive order can ever stop that
Natalie Y. Moore is a senior lecturer at Northwestern University and writes a monthly column for the Sun-Times.
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