The Whitewashing of Black History Month: How Its Radical Power Has Been Erased

Credit: Solomon Peabo

The founders of Black History Week, and later month, meant for it to be a reckoning — a space to honor my people’s grit, triumph, and indomitable spirit. But each year, I watch its edges soften, its fire dimmed, and its truths buried beneath palatable half-truths. As a Black man, this erasure does not feel abstract; it is a quiet theft, a hollowing out of something meant to sustain and recognize us. Our struggle and brilliance story deserves to roar but is often reduced to a whisper.

This isn’t just an abstract issue for me; it’s deeply personal. The whitewashing of Black History Month feels like an insult, a refusal to fully acknowledge the pain, resilience, and joy that defines the Black experience in this country. It continues a long history of ignoring and distorting the truth about who we are and where we come from.

Let’s explore why this deserves discussion.

A History Narrowed

When Carter G. Woodson created Negro History Week in 1926 — later expanded into Black History Month — his goal was clear: to challenge the systemic erasure of Black contributions. He knew this exclusion wasn’t accidental but deliberate, designed to reduce Black people to criminals and laborers while ignoring their role in shaping America. This month was meant to confront that lie, not serve as a performance.

Yet today, it feels more like selective remembrance masked as celebration. The same names — Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman — are repeated, but their legacies are diluted. King’s radical critiques of capitalism, militarism, and systemic racism are buried beneath a sanitized version of his “dream.” Parks is reduced to a single bus ride, erasing her lifelong activism. Meanwhile, Malcolm X, Zora Neale Hurston, Fred Hampton, James Baldwin, Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, Angela Davis, Fannie Lou Hamer, and countless others are sidelined, their voices too uncompromising for mainstream recognition. Black History Month was never meant to be comfortable — it was meant to tell the whole truth.

Society doesn’t just erase Black history — it rewrites it. Slavery is framed as an unfortunate chapter rather than the economic engine that built the United States. Jim Crow is treated as a brief injustice instead of a calculated system of racial control designed to oppress those who resisted. Today’s struggles — mass incarceration, voter suppression, police violence — are dismissed as isolated issues instead of the continuation of that same oppression.

How often do we hear “Racism is over” or “Get over slavery” — always from those who benefit most from its legacy? This demand to forget isn’t about progress; it’s about protecting fragile egos and avoiding accountability. No one tells Jewish people to forget the Holocaust or asks Native Americans to ignore the Trail of Tears. Yet, Black history is erased, rewritten, and softened to make it easier for the descendants of its perpetrators to digest. The erasure hasn’t stopped — it has just evolved.

See my article Losing Friends During Election Season: The Sequel.)

The Black Panther Party: Resistance Misunderstood

Nowhere is the whitewashing of Black history more glaring than in the erasure of the Black Panther Party. Founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the Panthers embodied the radical self-determination Malcolm X championed. They armed themselves not recklessly but out of necessity — to defend Black communities from police violence. Yet, their work extended far beyond self-defense. They fed children, opened free health clinics, provided legal aid, and launched education programs.

Despite this, they are often reduced to caricatures — labeled as extremists rather than revolutionaries confronting state-sanctioned brutality. The FBI’s COINTELPRO saw them as a threat, infiltrating their ranks, spreading disinformation, and assassinating their leaders — including Fred Hampton, who was just 21 when he was murdered in his sleep. Hampton preached unity, coalition-building, and community care — much like Martin Luther King Jr., who was also targeted and killed for challenging systemic oppression. While King’s nonviolent approach is widely remembered, Hampton’s more assertive resistance remains largely ignored. Why is one legacy elevated while the other is buried?

Black Lives Matter: Continuing the Fight

Credit: Connor McManus

Much like the Black Panther Party, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has been vilified, misrepresented, and distorted by those who fear its power. Founded in 2013 by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, BLM was born out of outrage following the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s killer. What began as a declaration of humanity in the face of indifference has since become a global movement, confronting police violence, systemic racism, and economic exploitation.

Yet, like every Black liberation movement before it, BLM has been met with relentless attacks. Critics smear it as anti-police, divisive, even corrupt — weaponizing misinformation to discredit a movement that refuses to accept injustice. These distortions are nothing new. The same tactics were used to undermine the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers, and anti-lynching activists before them. In reality, BLM’s work is rooted in the same tradition of resistance that Black History Month was meant to uplift. Policy advocacy, mutual aid, community organizing — these are the lifelines of a movement built on action, not empty rhetoric. But because it refuses to bow to whitewashed narratives of “acceptable” resistance, BLM faces the same repression that every radical push for Black freedom has endured.

Understanding why Black Lives Matter belongs in Black History Month requires distinguishing between the phrase and the movement. Saying “Black Lives Matter” is a declaration — an assertion of dignity in a world that has consistently devalued Black life. It is a necessary response to a system that continues to treat Black people as expendable.

But a declaration alone is not enough. The movement transforms those words into action. BLM is not just a slogan — it is a force that mobilizes protests, demands policy change, and challenges the very foundations of systemic oppression. While the phrase can be diluted, co-opted, and repackaged into corporate soundbites, the movement refuses to be reduced to symbolism. It demands more than acknowledgment; it demands justice.

Saying Black Lives Matter is the first step. Fighting for Black lives is the work.

The Role of Critical Race Theory

No discussion of Black history — or its erasure — is complete without addressing Critical Race Theory (CRT). Developed by scholars like Kimberlé Crenshaw and Derrick Bell, CRT provides the framework to understand how Racism is not just about individual prejudice but is embedded in laws, institutions, and policies. It explains why disparities in wealth, housing, policing, and education have persisted long after the Civil Rights Movement.

But CRT has become a target in recent years by Conservative Republicans declaring war on the “Woke” agenda and demonizing those who aim to present a truthful reckoning with America’s past. The push to ban CRT is not about academic disagreement but silencing the truth. It is about ensuring that Black History Month remains a feel-good celebration rather than a challenge to the status quo.

(I’ll expound on this in another more in another article.)

Fighting for the Whole Story

The whitewashing of Black History Month is not inevitable — it is a choice. And so is the decision to resist it. Reclaiming this month means demanding more than familiar names and sanitized narratives. It means amplifying the voices history tries to erase and refusing to reduce Black history to comfortable soundbites. Our stories are not just lessons — they are urgent, raw, and often unsettling. They expose the myths this nation tells itself, which is precisely why they must be told in full.

Black History Month is not a time for complacency. It is a time for truth. A time to honor the radical courage of our ancestors and confront the unfinished work before us. It reminds us of the depth of our history, the weight of our sacrifices, and the strength that endures.

When I think of Black history, I do not see neat conclusions or softened lessons. I see stories too powerful to be confined. I see the Black Panther Party feeding our children, Black Lives Matter marching for our lives, and Critical Race Theory exposing the systems that still oppress us. I see Martin’s real dream and Baldwin’s fearless words, challenging us to persevere, demand acceptance, and fight for justice.

This month is not a favor granted to us — it is a victory wrestled from a history that sought to erase us. And I refuse to let it be softened. I refuse to let it be rewritten. Our history is not easy, but it is ours, and it must be told — unapologetically and unafraid.