By: ENG Jole
Special to the Chronicle
The Amazonian rainforests are losing upwards of 80,000 acres daily, according to a 2009 “Scientific American” article. Seven years later, I’m sure that rate has only increased. This means that every day, hundreds of species are lost to the greed of deforestation. It would be absurd to think that, when confronted with these numbers, one would reply that other forests are being deforested too and that too much time is spent focusing on rain forests. What about the forest in my backyard, they say, as a tree is trimmed for its health? Everyone knows about deforestation anyway, they say, everyone has to take life science. However it’s still unacceptable for society to distract itself from the very real losses that are occurring in the Amazon and the devastation it will cause to the entire ecosystem, even if it might not affect one personally today.
Black History Month is no different. Actually, I stand corrected. It is an even worse mistake to dismiss given the atrocities that African-Americans have experienced throughout this country’s history. People of color have been trampled upon and subjugated from the moment white explorers set foot on North America. Millions of Africans were ripped from their homes and families to be property for white landowners. They were dehumanized, and the effects of this nefarious discrimination continues to this day, where black men are six times more likely to be arrested as white men and unemployment amongst African-Americans as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is double that of Caucasians, with the real unemployment gap probably much higher if one measures those who are working part-time but want to work full-time or have given up looking for work. People of color are still in many ways second-class citizens in the United States, and the country still has a long way to go in recognizing both the forms of systematic racism that exist today and the magnitude of what has happened in the past, both of which have largely been swept under the rug by the white establishment.
Hollywood continues to whitewash historical events, with one of the most recent notable examples being the 2015 film based on the Stonewall riots, a watershed event for the LGBTQ community that largely occurred thanks to the efforts of black trans women. Pre-American history itself as taught in schools is also largely whitewashed, with little focus on African civilizations and their accomplishments. Regardless of the progress that has been made, the United States’ collective consciousness is focused on the accomplishments of white men.
Black History Month serves as a reminder to the white people of the United States such as myself that we owe an infinite debt to those that were and still are being subjugated at our benefit. We took hundreds of years of freedom and millions of lives from the black community; the least we can do is give them a month.
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