February is Black History Month here in Canada and in the USA. It s a month that is set aside to teach about the contributions that people of African descent have made to American culture and history. Last year I celebrated by writing a series of essays and posting them on Facebook:

• What is “black” – pt. 1: skin colour
• What is “black” – pt. 2: self-identity
• What is “black” – pt. 3: my working definition
• “The N Word”
• “Polite” racism
• Three steps toward ending black-white racism

While these posts were meaningful to me, and provided the basic underpinning of this entire blog exercise you’re currently reading, they’re not particularly relevant to black history. In my personal life I read a bit about pre-colonial African history and archaeology, which cast a great deal of doubt about the idea that technology and civilization were European imports to Africa.

This year, my plan is to read and blog about black history in Canada. There’s a lot of it, but we weren’t taught it in school. Like it is done in most places, black history begins and ends with slavery. Black history is much richer and more ingrained with Canadian history than the issues specifically related to slavery. I am going to do some of my own reading and throw up one article per week summarizing what I’ve learned.

So… look forward to that I guess.