I wish I could join the crowd of people lining up to attack Black History Month. Four weeks and more on the transatlantic slave trade, the Underground Railroad and the Windrush Empire… that’s enough, already, again. As the setting sun shines through the cool October days and the harvest is celebrated or forgotten, I prepare to harvest the harvest of predictable requests in my overgrown inbox. “Could you speak at this Zoom event?” “” Do you want to offer us a comment? “Please write something witty and original for our left-wing scholarly journal.” I’m sure a lot of people would like to put this all to an end in a quiet moment. Sometimes I am among them. Most of the time, however, I am not.

I love Black History Month. Harriet Tubman, Olaudah Equiano, Ignatius Sancho, I love to hear these names over and over again. After all, the story is about recitation – the return of past events that are still relevant to the present. It doesn’t make sense to hear about something just once. History is not news. Listening to the lush orchestration of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor or the virtuosity of the score of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, I think about what more I can do to support the Chineke! Orchestra and its fabulous work. The fruits of the talents of so many black musicians, artists and writers are brought together and displayed in one exquisite display during this most poignant season. What not to like?

In fact, I’m so moved by the wonders of Black History Month that I think there should be a White History Month as well. Maybe in November. In the wake of this superb Mexican holiday, the Day of the Dead. Of course, here in Europe, we call it All Saints’ Day, but it’s more or less the same. With carnival or solemnity, we could start an entire month of British history with airbrushed non-whites.

Imagine the highlights of the reign of King James I – the gun power plot, Shakespeare, the Jacobean tragedy – not to mention that during his reign, in a place called Jamestown, Africans were landed in the Americas and reduced. in slavery. It was in 1619, so the Black History of October could take care of it: by November, we would be celebrating the History of the Whites, so needless to mention it.

Perhaps we could repeat the story of Walter Raleigh and his famous presentation of a potato to Queen Elizabeth I without discussing the genocide of the indigenous peoples of what we now call the Americas, which of course were the first to cultivate this culture. Imagine what could be achieved with a White History Month.