What Does it Mean to Celebrate Black History Month in 2022?

These past few years have been rough, to say the least, especially for Black individuals and people of color alike. Today marks the beginning of Black History Month, a time dedicated to honoring the triumphs and struggles of Black Americans throughout U.S. history.

We asked New Americans to share their feelings going into this year’s Black History Month and what we should be focusing on during this time.

This year — and every year, really — we should challenge ourselves to acknowledge Black history as American history. So, rather than viewing Black history within the confines of whom white America allows to be celebrated and how it allows us to celebrate, we should all view it as a foundational and constant thread of this country's existence. We have to push past our sound bites from the "I Have a Dream" speech, our exclusive social media praise of Rosa Parks, our showings of Loving — those narratives that fit society's idea of palatable, respectable, and comfortable. We must also recognize the complicated, difficult, radical figures in Black history that have brought us closer to liberation, like Laverne Cox and Assata Shakur, and celebrate the eternal beauty of their contributions to this world. Otherwise, we risk just going through the motions again this year.
- Raven DeRamus-Byers, Program Associate, PreK-12, Education Policy

I think that Nina Simone’s “Backlash Blues” (1967; lyrics by Langston Hughes) captures exactly how it feels to celebrate Black History Month in 2022, a moment where we have to really sit with the predictable backlash to the calls for racial justice and push for anti-racism that came into focus with the 2020 murder of George Floyd and many others.
- Melody Frierson, Project Manager, Office of the CEO and President & CTO

In my ideal future, "Black History Month" will be one of a number of "American History Months," but with a special emphasis on the experience of Americans of African descent, just as we would have months to celebrate Americans of Hispanic, Asian, Arab, Indigenous, and other descents. Ultimately, the dominance of male European-Americans in American history will be de-centered and embedded in the larger context of the history of all Americans. In all these cases, the history we remember demands reckoning and commemoration just as much as reflection and celebration.
- Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America

Black history is, and always has been, American history. And while we reach for the noble aim of Black History Month, every year the performative self-serving actions make the light at the end of the tunnel seem further and further away. It feels that American society — corporations, institutions, and the people — ignores the Black population and its culture until it’s February. So let’s set the virtue signaling aside and celebrate Black history the way it’s meant to be celebrated: we can talk about more than just the same four or five Black historical figures, we can strive to create voting rights legislation that makes being able to vote a right that everyone has, we can communicate and work to better policing in our cities, and we can do so much more.
- Joe Wilkes, Senior Editorial Content Associate, EPEC

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