Black History Month...and Me?

You may ask yourself, why is an old white man from vanilla Orange County, CA writing on Black History Month? Well, being candid, this is mostly aimed at my non Black peers. A few years back, something happened that had a large impact on my life that deserves sharing. It started off with a conversation with a Black coworker. We were just bullsh!tting, the way you do at work sometimes, when I asked the question, "Hey, your last name is Irish. What's the story there?" (Some of you may already see my misstep and are wincing.) My coworker replied, "That's the last name of the man who owned the members of my family."

<dead silence>

He gave me a moment to realize the impact of his response and he had the grace to open it up to a meaningful conversation. He explained that as a Black American, it could be that every time you sign your last name, you are signing the last name of the last man who bought and sold members of your family. Every time you sign your name you are reminded. He understood that my ignorance was not intentional, but I was ignorant none the less. That conversation, and subsequent conversations with my partner, a person of color, and others, have educated me more on what it was like to be Black in America than anything I learned in history class. The more I open myself to learning, the more I learn how much we have whitewashed what is too shameful to commit to history.

The Linn Family can be traced via Ancestry back to the mid 1700's when three brothers left Ireland and came to this continent. Through census records, we understand what they did for a living, where they migrated to, who they married and how many kids they had. There are pictures of at least one brother's grave outside of a town that bears the Linn name. We Linns have a sense of who we are, in part, because of who they were. If you are American of European descent, you can likely do the same with your family tree.

If you are Black in America and log onto Ancestry, you can trace the branches of your family tree but, likely as not, find a hard stop not too many generations back. That is when your relations were being inventoried as property, not seen as people.

Honestly, with all I have learned about what we've systematically done to Black Americans and how it echoes through generations, I am beginning to see their restraint, their dignity in the face of oppression and degradation, more than the anger that so many seem to focus on.

Black History Month is not only about celebration, it's also about the opportunity to learn from one another, to see one another for who we are and who we could be. People who look like me have taken enough, segregated enough, imprisoned enough, and assassinated enough. We have to be as active in lifting people up as we have been keeping them down. We have to look for the truth, even if it hurts. I'll acknowledge this time and honor it by continuing to learn from it and from people generous enough to educate me. You did not have to but you did.

Thank you, Jamil Moen, Erica Sewell, Samantha Goff, and Aaron Mitchell, I am a better man because of your guidance.

r.