Black History Month, like so many other things, has become a joke. Of course, black people commonly joke about it, but when the joke spreads, so does the irreverence fueling it. So what does the month mean to us? Are my rights, as a black person, now relevant? It’s not that black students at Hill face no adversity– a certain Instagram account, which I’m sure many of you are aware of, can attest to that. But somehow, we’ve managed to make this month a joke.

“He’s on the half-and-half plan this month, bro loses privileges after 8pm,” she said. As a friend and I walked away, I overheard the girl’s ending sentence—her final comeback to their joking roasts. This raised two concerns.

Firstly, she wasn’t black. It was in no way her right to judge his blackness, either way, but another layer was added to it by the fact that she had none.

Second, was that as far as it went? Was the extent of the month only for black students at Hill like myself to receive a slightly lower amount of jabs and roasts?

On social media, it’s much the same. Frederick Douglass is the reason February is this month in the first place, yet the majority of airtime is given to videos jokingly having white students lay down to be walked on by their black friends.

Black culture often influences pop culture. The joke coined around 2019 of using Black History Month as a defense in arguments or stories quickly translated to “not during pride month” in June, and “not during women’s history month” in March. But when it comes to women’s history month and pride month, these jokes don’t undercut the importance of history, and the importance of awareness. At least not so much as Black History Month. I simply ask you to consider where the jokes end and the racial awareness begins.   

Walking around campus, I often see raised fists and bended knee, or people reciting the lyrics “No freedom till we’re equal” ironically. Let’s put things in perspective. The most recent known human zoo was an exhibit of African people in France in 1994, after the invention of the cell phone. Do you think that since then, we’ve become ‘equal’?

So I ask you, non-black students of the Hill, to enlighten me. What in the world is so funny about black history month? Is it the fact that your black peers fear calling you out because they know you’ll overlook them? Is it the fact that some students at Hill can’t even report others saying slurs because they know they’ll be socially punished for standing up for their race? Is it the microaggressions we face every day? Or perhaps the awkward situations black students find themselves in watching their counterparts pull out a blaccent for a random sentence. Please, what’s the joke? Because I personally don’t understand it.