My interest in Black History Month did not start from curiosity. It started from what I already knew to be true. Our curricular could not let us get out of school without learning about colonialism, missionaries and slavery.
For a long time, I understood descendants of
slavery share real ties with Africans on the continent. Not symbolic ties.
Blood ties. Cultural ties. Memory ties. Long before social media debates, they
spoke of Africa as the motherland. They fought for a free Africa. Black
communities in Harlem are said to have participated in the “Hands off
Abyssinia” campaign and Ethiopia was never colonized. In recent years, they
built systems to trace their origins on the contient and they seemed excited
about what the results revealed. They seemed to be proud of having an idea
about the exact part of the Africa their descendants came from. They shifted
from calling themselves Black Americans to African Americans because, I
presume, identity mattered more than location.
So the connection never felt accidental but last year,
something unsettled me. I found myself online, sandwiched by African American
women swearing that they could never be African. That the only African thing on
them is just the melanin and nothing else. No emotional tie. No historical
closeness. Africa, to them, felt distant, almost irrelevant. In fact, they
added that our body shapes are different too because Africans are plump, large
features and also intellectually poorer that the African Americans.
That moment forced a pause. I wondered if at all,
they read what they wrote. If at all, they meant what they said. Their wording
was not different from the very sentiments racist white people have when
related with Black people. I could not believe what I was reading because to
me, slavery did not erase their origin. It disrupted it. Distance did not
cancel ancestry. It complicated it. Yet somewhere along the line, separation
turned into belief. Africans became “other.” Blackness became political.
Identity became shaped by where someone survived, not where they came from.
That is where the fracture starts. Not in skin. Not in blood but in perception.
From there, Blackness begins to sort itself. Who
sounds closer to power? Who looks closer to acceptance? Who lives closer to
opportunity? And slowly, a pyramid forms inside a people who already survived
being placed at the bottom of someone else’s pyramid.
Black History Month often sits on pride, culture, and resistance. All matter. Yet one part stays quiet. The part about how Black people see themselves, and how those views grew inside systems built to rank human worth. For centuries, whiteness placed itself at the top of the social pyramid - by law, story, religion, science, and violence. The message stayed simple. White meant superior. Black meant less.
Over time, the harm did not stop at race lines.
It moved inward. Descendants of enslaved Africans learned survival inside white
systems. Some grew into belief systems where closeness to whiteness meant
progress - even in the days of when slavery was legal, the House Negro was of a
higher rank that took on the identity of their master. Accent, skin tone, class,
passport, and education turned into status. Slowly, some began to feel higher
than Africans on the continent.
Time evolved. Slavery was erased and Black people
moved freely. The African who were left on the continent started moving to the
western countries and the Africans who left the continent met another trap.
Migration became proof of success. Distance from home began to sound like
development. Some started to speak of those who stayed as backward, slow, or
stuck.
Then inside the continent itself and by extension
the Black community, another ranking formed. Lighter against darker. Same
pyramid. New faces.
You see it in beauty before you see it in politics.
Natural hair gets labeled unprofessional. Relaxed
hair gets called neat. Dark skin gets called aggressive. Bleached skin gets
called soft. Full African features get mocked. European features get praised. Somewhere
along the line, a cruel sentence started moving quietly through society. It is
better to be a light skinned “ugly” woman than a dark skinned beautiful one.
This hierarchy injures self-concept. Self-image
grows from comparison before it grows from truth. When value comes from
standing above someone else, identity stays unstable. Pride turns into defense.
Confidence turns into performance. Belonging turns into competition.
Mental health feels this first. People chase
worth instead of living it. They fear looking ordinary. They hide roots. They feel
shame for where they come from. They speak success without peace.
A mind raised inside ranking systems learns to measure itself all day. Am I
better? Am I behind? Am I enough? None of these questions build safety inside a
person.
The danger sits deeper with Black communities
because history already attacked dignity. When oppression leaves the room, its
furniture stays in the mind. Children absorb it early. They learn skin tone
meaning. They learn hair texture meaning. They learn accent meaning.
They learn location meaning. Before they learn self-respect.
This shapes anxiety, comparison, burnout, and emotional
isolation. A person feels pressure to prove value instead of experience life.
Many grow successful and still feel unseen inside.
Black History Month should offer more than
celebration. It should offer repair. And repair starts when Black people stop
climbing imaginary ladders and start building grounded identity because a grounded
identity asks different questions.
Who am I without ranking? What stories raised me?
What pain shaped my people? What strength survived anyway? What does dignity
look like without comparison?
Mental health grows where belonging grows. A
person who feels rooted does not need superiority. A person who feels seen does
not need distance. A person who feels whole does not need hierarchy.
February gives space to revisit Black history as
emotional history, not only political history. It gives room to talk about how
racism trained perception and I honor Bell Hooks for pointing it out in her "Rock My Soul" book. This month offers space to assess how colonial systems shaped self-image,
and how healing asks for internal freedom, not only external progress.
This month at NABU Network, we focus on Black
mental health through identity, childhood, culture, rest, and self-respect. Not
performance. Not ranking. Not competition. We look at history as something
lived in the mind, carried in the body, and passed in families. Because the
real work of Black history does not end in pride posts. It continues in how
Black people learn to see themselves without pyramids. And how they raise the
next generation to stand on ground, not on someone else’s back.
