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<\/a>\u00a0Mark Braboy It is February and Black History Month is in full effect. Unfortunately to some, the month-long celebration is unnecessary while others believe that there is not as much fanfare and celebration as there once was.<\/p>\n In the eyes of many young people, it seems celebrating black history is starting to lose its relevance.<\/p>\n A lot of people of my generation are feeling very jaded about Black History Month. Some are tired of hearing about the same eight or nine figures that are always brought up, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks and Fredrick Douglass, just to name a few.<\/p>\n Some believe that current African-American history makers are not discussed enough. Others compare Black History Month to Affirmative Action and believe that Black History should be constantly taught and discussed all year around.<\/p>\n Before I just jump into my opinion, I am going to briefly examine how Black History Month is being celebrated throughout the following: Mainstream Media, the public school system at large, and Jackson State University. These were chosen because these are what I believe my generation rely upon.<\/p>\n As far as the mainstream media is concerned, I do not think they have forgotten that February is Black History Month. Mostly all of the top media, sports, and entertainment outlets have acknowledged and celebrated it in their own way, whether big or small.<\/p>\n In many public schools, it appears that teaching African-American history is under attack. Some parents believe that the schools do not celebrate Black History Month or even teach African-American history as adequately as they should.<\/p>\n Also, there appears to be an internal conflict where some teachers try to mesh the lessons of our history with what they are being paid to teach, but some administrators frown upon this.\u00a0 A recent incident at Howard University Middle School of Mathematics and Science where a principal fired several teachers for teaching African-American history beyond the school\u2019s curriculum, is evidence of this.<\/p>\n At JSU, individual departments have celebrated Black History Month in their own way. The English and Modern Foreign Language Department recently held their annual African-American Read-In and the JSU chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. held a panel discussion on black on black crime entitled: Saving Our Sons. JSU is doing their part as they always have.<\/p>\n What has happened to a lot of us is that we have become so dependent on our environment feeding us and letting us know that it is Black History Month that we forget how it important it is to educate ourselves and our children about our culture all year. It is becoming more evident that we need to take it upon ourselves to research our own history and spread the knowledge and stories that have been passed from our elders. We should stop relying on entities to feed our history to us.<\/p>\n At the same time, a new approach needs to be taken when celebrating Black History Month, especially in our schools. We need to acknowledge pioneers of the past as well as the present history makers when discussing black history.\u00a0 The conversation needs to remain relevant to the current generation to foster interest.<\/p>\n In order for Black History Month to be preserved, our generation has to take the responsibility upon ourselves to be educated on our history. And the learning does not have to stop when February is over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0Mark Braboy Associate Editor It is February and Black History Month is in full effect. Unfortunately to some, the month-long celebration is unnecessary while others…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_plus_post_options":"{}","editor_plus_copied_stylings":"{}","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>Associate Editor<\/strong><\/p>\n