Black History Month takes place annually during the month of October in the UK. The month is an opportunity for us to understand more about our collective history from the perspective of black people. It is also an opportunity to commemorate the struggles as well as the achievements of black people across the UK, past and present.
Black History Month is incredibly vital. The events of this year through the Black Lives Matter movement have demonstrated the need for greater understanding of race relations, now more than ever before. Black History Month has been taking place for many years, and we should not pretend that this has only been an issue recently. Stephen Lawrence Day takes place on 22 April, in commemoration of the death of a black teenage boy who was killed in a racially motivated attack in 1993. It took until 2002 for a murder conviction.
By putting a spotlight onto the issue of black people across the UK, we can build our wider understanding of issues black people face in their lives, and the burden placed by a history of oppressions and slavery. It is incredibly powerful to see how these play out on individuals in modern day; black staff being told that they are aggressive, do not have leadership potential and being addressed as the assistant next to their white counterparts.
I attended the Civil Service Black History Month Launch event yesterday, where all of these issues were starkly highlighted. It is tough to hear, especially when these same complaints come from those who have made it towards the ‘top’, and yet are still facing the exact same issues that black colleagues all around us face on a day-to-day basis.
One complaint about such set-piece months is that it can create a sub-culture of sorts: black history month tends to be dominated by black and BAME individuals in attendance, with few outside of these groups attending. In some senses this is natural, white people may feel that black history does not relate to them.
However, this fundamentally undermines the point – black history is all of our history, it is simply looking at it from a different lens. Like many issues around Diversity and Inclusion, this needs to be seen as a societal event, not just one for those in the relevant diversity group. So we need to take this as a collective responsibility no matter what our background if we are to learn and grow as a society.
Indeed, someone like myself who is not black has most to learn by attending these events – I have gained so much valuable experience and knowledge from my black colleagues that I simply would not have otherwise. This has helped me understand the perspective of black people much better, as well as the issues that modern Britain still faces. I would rarely get the chance to do so otherwise.
So I would greatly encourage you to get involved with black history – especially if you are not black. There is so much to learn and celebrate, and this information is lost if you do not take the time to listen to it for yourself.