Black History IS American History

I always thought of myself as Black until my freshman year in college when people started calling me African American. I still find this perplexing as I know there is such thing as a Japanese American, a German American, or a Mexican American. In my opinion an African American is a person who  immigrated to America from Africa.

Black Americans did not immigrate here. We were brought here against our will. We built this country from the beginning. At the same time Native Americans (who are really the only ones who can truly call themselves Americans if in fact that is what they called this - their land) were here before any of us.

Since we built this land, in many cases were care givers to the early presidents, and have the same blood as the "founders" of this land through the forced or mutual sexual activities between slave and owner.

Why is our history segregated?

Why is our history squeezed into one month in the year?

Our history IS American History. Slavery IS apart of American History. The Civil Rights Movement IS apart of American History.

It seems that there could be or should be a re-thinking of how we teach our youth about history of all types. Music History, Art History, World History. Instead of focusing on the Western side of the story, can we integrate all of the stories? Can we see history from the point of view of the Native American, South African, Chinese, Brazilian?

During my education it was made clear that the only valid history was that belonging to the European and their descendants (even on this side of the pond). When I studied Music History in college and graduate school it was focused solely on Western tradition with a splash of World Music. If a student wanted to learn about World Music it was a separate class. Lumping all the rest of the world into a single class. As if to say this isn't the "real" or "mainstream" Music History. In fact, I'm really not sure why American schools focus so much on the European tradition anyway since our Music History is reflective of World Music with all the influences due to immigration and slavery.

I really wish we could stop segregating our stories. I wish we could see each of our histories as reflective and inverse to one another. A history of our people includes all of it. All stories. And not just a story to tell one month in the year.