Black History Month

Once again we find ourselves in February. It's been designated as "Black History" month since 1976. Before that we had Negro History Week, as far back as 1926, according to my cursory research.

Over the course of my lifetime I've gone from white trash trailer park kid raised by a father who by most measurements would be considered a bigot. There was only two things he liked less than the black race, Jews and Taxes. However, he was a "good man" on the inside, he was just raised in an age, and environment that left him with poisonous beliefs. It didn't help matters much that his holy book also had enough racial material in it to "back up his beliefs".

I never could get in on being a racist full bore, though I must confess that I took on enough of the behavior and language to avoid ridicule from my peers and family. But as I grew older, and matured, and lived my own life, I gathered my own data, and observed things with my own eyes. And I find myself today literally unable to be racist. I may have a touch of "culturist" to me, but I understand it's the environment that creates people who behave poorly, in groups, not human instinct.

I have come to another point, just recently. I was watching some History Channel stuff this month and also having Facebook and Topix discussions concerning such things as religion, evolution, race and others, and it dawned on me, now that I accept evolution, and now that I accept that my distant ancestors came out of Africa, it dawned on me that MY ancestors are black, if I go far enough back down my ancestral lineage.

So in honor of Black History Month, I'd like to proudly proclaim my personal pride in my own black heritage. All of us have evolved from common ancestry, and we are all family.