Commentary: Black History Month represents a “Blue” multiracial democratic effort to advance racial equity in America amid a resurgent “Red” nationalist backlash.
Ed.: The essays, analyses and opinions presented as Community Voices express the perspectives of their authors on topics of interest and importance to the community and are not intended to reflect perspectives on behalf of Salish Current.
It is now 100 years since the great Africa-American historian Carter G. Woodson initiated the celebration of Negro History Week in 1926. A Harvard Ph.D. in history, Woodson had cofounded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915.
Those of us old enough to remember will recall America’s Bicentennial in 1976 and the massive celebrations surrounding it. As fate would have it, 1976 was also the 50th anniversary of Black History Week. Amidst a general atmosphere of celebration, President Gerald Ford officially declared the celebration of Black History Month. This was years after Black activist communities had begun month-long celebrations.
How ironic it is that we celebrate the 100 years of Black contributions to the American saga as the buildup for the nation’s 250 birthday commences. Festivities are supposed to in some way salute the values that bind us as a nation. But we are currently a deeply divided country. I blog about what I and others call the Red and Blue nations. Our president is a virulent proponent of Red American nationalism. He has repeatedly embraced white supremacist rhetoric and worked to wash away our history of dispossession of the Indigenous peoples and enslavement of Black people.
Celebrating Black History Month is a manifestation of Blue American Nationalism and the embrace of a multiracial democratic future. Red American Nationalism wishes to foreclose further discussion of Blue nationalism.
Carter Woodson’s generation created Black organizations and Black celebrations because they were denied “equity” and “inclusion” in professional associations and other institutions which did not welcome “diversity.” After a decade of Black Power organizing from outside of the mainstream institutions Black History Week had been included, and by 1976 a Republican U.S. president was also receptive to the expansion of the week to a month. The diversity of our national heritage was being included in an equitable way.
Great strides have been made in all manners of economic, social and political institutions over the last half century. But it took over 250 years to solidify those institutions. And even after a bloody civil war those wishing to uphold racist systems were allowed to return to power in the South and were still around in institutional spaces in every part of the country. That’s why we needed a civil rights movement to shake up the system again in the 1960s.
Whatcom County’s connection today to the national story
Black power was called for by those impatient with the pace of change in the 1960s. Some Black power demands were incorporated into the system; others were not. Initiatives like the delivery of equitable education or job opportunity regardless of race were attempted, but the Red Nation backlash against those strides began to overturn those efforts by the Reagan era of the 1980s. Other issues like police reform were never seriously addressed.
The mass protests after the murder of George Floyd fostered a renewed national conversation about racial inequity in American institutional life. Beginning with the lingering problem of policing and criminal justice implementation but quickly citing every nook and cranny of society the movement now calls out “systemic racism.”
In 2020, when hundreds of George Floyd activists marched on Bellingham City Hall, conversations led to a call to form a county racial equity commission. The leadership initially was composed of people who were clamoring from outside a system they saw as racist. Yet they insisted upon creating a quasi-governmental entity that would become inexorably part of that system.
The Whatcom Racial Equity Commission is a Blue Nation institution in a Purple county that is trending Blue against the wishes of very powerful and longstanding Red Nation interests. The George Floyd protests here saw the emergence of a new generation of people of color creating new spaces outside established systems. They have been heard are being “included” into the established spaces recognizing the need to hear “diverse voices” to ensure that services are being offered in an “equitable” fashion.
The Whatcom Racial Equity Commission itself has begun to do some important work in the areas of incarceration prevention and reduction and support for immigrants from the federal crackdown against them. The Bellingham Public Schools and the Bellingham and Whatcom County Public Libraries continue to behave with DEI principles. The Washington State Attorney General’s Office has been very active in court opposing the Trump administration in a variety of areas. Our state superintendent for public instruction has signaled that his office has no intention of making wholesale changes to “whitewash” school curriculum or other practices to placate the Trump administration.
Our entire state has a Blue target on its back for refusing to turn back the hands of time at this semi-quincentennial of the birth of our nation. Carter G. Woodson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass are smiling on us.
— By Vernon Damani Johnson
Also read in Salish Current:
• “How Black PNW artists find peace in a changing world,” March 18, 2025
• “Commentary: Why losing Roberta Flack hit so hard,” Feb. 28, 2025
• “Commentary: In celebration of Black History Month,” Feb. 9, 2024
• “Commentary: Ongoing racial reckoning in the post-George Floyd era,” Feb. 9, 2023
• “Commentary: Powerful stories bring understanding, in Black History Month,” Feb. 5, 2021
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