performance at Super Bowl 50 (one of the most watched programs in the history of the US television industry), Kendrick Lamar’s success and Brittany Howard’s closing performance at the 58th annual Grammy Awards, and Obama’s opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court Justice confirmed that “February 2016 is the blackest Black History Month ever.”
Throughout February 2016 and into March, countless bloggers—from unknown, amateur, personal bloggers to insightful public intellectuals—cosigned on Young’s observations, adding other events, black accomplishments, and symbolic triumphs to the mix. Some developed interesting and sometimes humorous lists justifying why February 2016 was a historic month for black America in blogs bearing titles like “5 Reasons This Has Been the Most Unapologetically Black Black History Month Ever,” “9 Reasons February 2016 Is the Blackest Black History Month Ever,” and even “29 Reasons This Was the Blackest Black History Month Ever.” When placed within the broader scope of African American history and the enduring black freedom struggle, most of the “reasons” that graced bloggers’ inventories were insignificant: Stephen Curry’s brilliance on the basketball court or Cam Newton’s swagger, the “Blackish” episode on police brutality, Kanye West’s announcement of his ingenious “The Life of Pablo” album, Morgan Freeman’s voice being used by the WAZE navigation app, the introduction of a black “American Girl” doll from the civil rights era, the release of several PBS-style black history documentaries, and so on.
CNN Digital joined the fray on the last day of the month. In an essay “From Beyoncé to Chris Rock: Best Black History Month Ever?” one multimedia journalist summarized what other bloggers before her concluded: “Even if we did not reach the absolute pinnacle of Black History Month, it’s been pretty memorable.”5
Why was there so much media attention and hype related to black America during the 2016 Black History Month commemorations? If we were to revisit past commemorations, we could certainly identify equally important achievements and landmark moments. As strange as it might sound, one of the reasons that the 2016 #BlackHistoryMonth movement deemed the 40th anniversary of this annual observance the “best,” “greatest,” and “blackest” Black History Month ever was arguably the byproduct of Beyoncé’s popularity in African American and US culture. Her and her crew’s superficial nods to the Black Panther Party during the Super Bowl half-time celebration evidently upset some of the older white viewers who were probably expecting an apolitical performance from this crossover megastar. On the other hand, younger African Americans, especially personal bloggers and public intellectuals in training, praised Beyoncé’s actions as forthrightly challenging the white power structure by unapologetically vindicating dimensions of black womanhood and, most explicitly, honoring the Black Panther Party, one of the most militant organizations in the modern black freedom struggle.
Of course, Beyoncé is not the only hip-hop generation icon to exalt Black Power–era activism. There exists an identifiable tradition of Black Panther Party revivalism in hip-hop culture dating back to the “golden age” of hip-hop and earlier. Public Enemy, KRS-One, Paris, Nas, Lil’ Kim, Dead Prez, Jay-Z, and Kanye West (just to name a handful) have all revered the Panthers in their lyrics and self-styling. Beyoncé was building upon hip-hop artists’ proclivity to salute the Panther’s “revolutionary” disposition. Yet, her status in US popular culture garnered much more attention for her nod to the Panthers than any of the acknowledgments of her predecessors. As feminist scholar bell hooks suggests in her tendentious critique of Beyoncé’s Lemonade album, “Beyoncé’s audience is the world and that world of business and money-making has no color.”6
Was February 2016 really such a historic Black History Month? Assuredly, previous generations of African Americans could have compelling reasons for claiming that the Black History Month commemorations and achievements of their times were equally if not more important.
For instance, in February 1977, businessman and civil rights activist Vernon E. Jordan Jr. announced to readers of the New Pittsburgh Courier: “There’s a degree of excitement about this year’s observation of Black History Month missing from previous ones.”7 For Jordan, Blacks were poised to make economic advancements, “regional unity” was on the rise, Martin Luther King Sr. had just delivered a memorable sermon at the Lincoln Memorial, and the television miniseries Roots premiered on ABC. A decade later in a write-up entitled “This Black History Month Is Different from Others,” editors of the Atlanta Daily World blazoned: “As we enter into 1987 Black History Month we hope the readers of your Daily World will take a broader view of the situation in the universe than ever before.” They continued, “This is a time in history that mankind hangs in the balance … This hour in history confronts mankind with the most decisive test in history.”8
Similarly, throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, it was not uncommon for events during February to be advertised as the “best” or “one of the best” Black History Month programs ever. The editor of Diverse Issues in Higher Education heralded that Black History Month 2006 was “memorable” because of the plans to build the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.9 In 2009, numerous journalists declared that with the election of Obama, the commemoration had a new meaning and would undergo a facelift. And in 2014, one reporter even hailed Macy’s “Eras of Black Style” Black History Month receptions—held in ten major cities through the nation—“some of the best Black History Month events ever.”10
Online discussions of issues pertaining to black history, including Black History Month, are in many ways refreshing, at times engendering critical reflections and discourse among young African Americans born after the modern civil rights and Black Power movements. Michael Eric Dyson’s recent veneration of “an emerging black intelligentsia” in The New Republic is judicious.11 Many of these social critics have creatively used the Internet to disseminate and popularize their ideas. In some respects, they have altered the black public intellectual landscape. At the same time, droves of today’s black bloggers suffer from presentism, failing to analyze contemporary phenomenon in historical contexts. This in part seems to be the case with much of the commentary surrounding Black History Month during 2016 and earlier in the twenty-first century.
QUESTIONING BLACK HISTORY MONTH IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Black History Month 2016 was discussed and debated for reasons beyond those identified by personal bloggers. On January 20, 2016, African American actress Stacey Dash appeared on “Fox and Friends” to discuss disgruntled African American celebrities who had recently called for a boycott of the Oscars because of an absence of black nominees—namely Jada Pinkett Smith, Spike Lee, Al Sharpton, and others who supported the #OscarsSoWhite movement. Dash denounced BET and its annual awards ceremony and the NAACP Image Awards, deeming the event self-segregation. While elaborating upon why BET should not exist, she added, “Just like there shouldn’t be a Black History Month. We’re Americans. Period. That’s it.” The prying host of the show egged Dash on by asking: “Are you saying that there shouldn’t be a Black History Month because there isn’t a white history month?” and Dash replied, “Exactly. Exactly.” Dash, who endorsed businessman and Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 election and was, from 2014 until 2017, a “semi-regular” personality on the Fox News Channel’s daytime talk show “Outnumbered,” was a hotly discussed newsmaker following her remarks. Unsurprisingly, many African Americans took to social media to criticize the former Clueless actress. Even her cousin, hip-hop mogul Damon Dash, condemned his kin’s comments, surmising that she was paid by Fox News to make such statements.
As brief and perhaps insignificant as they were, Stacey Dash’s statements spilled over onto a larger public stage. At the 2016 Oscars hosted by comedian Chris Rock, she was part of a skit in which she was introduced as being the new director of the Academy’s “minority outreach program,” an initiative that does not exist, of course. Dash announced, “I cannot wait to help my people out. Happy Black History Month.” This parody failed to make a splash
