February has been designated as “Black History Month”.
Do you think all Black people are happy with this? If so, I suggest you read the following exchange which took place in 2005, on CBS’ 60 Minutes show, between co-host Mike Wallace and actor/activist Morgan Freeman.
Wallace: “Black History Month, you find. . . . “
Freeman: “Ridiculous.”
Wallace: “Why?”
Freeman: “You`re going to relegate my history to a month?”
Wallace: “Come on.”
Freeman: “What do you do with yours? Which month is White History Month? Come on, tell me.”
Wallace: “I’m Jewish.”
Freeman: “Okay. Which month is Jewish History Month?
Wallace: “There isn’t one.”
Freeman: “Oh. Oh, why not? Do you want one?”
Wallace: “No, no.”
Freeman: “I don’t either. I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.”
Wallace: “How are we going to get rid of racism until . . . ?
Freeman: “Stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a White man. And I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a Black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman, you understand. You`re not going to say, ‘I know this White guy named Mike Wallace.’ Hear what I’m saying?”
Did Morgan Freeman have a valid point then? You bet he did. The same one Martin Luther King had when he said that we should be defined not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character.
Is that point every bit as valid today as it was when he said it 19 years ago? You bet it is.
Have the race hustlers who, in the name of anti-racism, have created more and more of a racial divide learned a thing from those words? Evidently they have not.
As someone who has said over and over again that…
“Being Black makes you nothing but Black. Not smart or stupid, not intuitive or obtuse, not accomplished or unaccomplished, but Black. Period, end of story.”
…I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Freeman.
I’ve also repeatedly said:
“You can’t solve racism by creating more of it”.
Separating us by race doesn’t work. Never will.
When will they ever learn?
