What/When is Black History Month? February

Photo: Joseph Jenkins Roberts (courtesy Library of Congress)

BLACK HISTORY LINKS:
Black History Canada
City of Toronto's Black History
Black History UK
Literary Traveler (Antigua)
U.S. Library of Congress

I don't have a lot of widely-recognized credentials, but I do understand how HUMAN BEINGS look for facts in Cyberspace. And my personal experience suggests that people are often too self-enamored with their own awareness, that they forget that the reason people ask a question is that they don't know the answer! (for certain).

As my dad often says: "You ask for the time, and someone tells you how to make a watch."

I entered the following question into a search engine because I wasn't certain that Black History Month is celebrated in the same month throughout the world (at least in USA, Canada and the UK). Oddly, I had to do a fair amount of searching to find the answer, even with this simple question:

"When is Black History Month in Canada?" Obviously, Blacks in Canada know the answer. But white-bread Americans like me are left out in the cold.

I'm not complaining...I know that formatting information in a way that expects a question, is not a natural human ability. But I run into this problem in MANY situations where the level of technical literacy and the understanding of language construction are not commensurate...and I feel as if the average person (and even the intelligent person) is being treated as stupid.

Hence, I identify with the black experience in more ways than one (I am already treated as a second-class citizen because I have Multiple Sclerosis and can't get around very well.) But I felt compelled to make available an easy-to-navigate summary for people who just want BASIC information about Black History in the English-Speaking world.

In Good Faith--mattergy