“Every one of our students lives in a city Latino people helped build. That is everyone’s history.”
When I was a kid, Black History Month was the shortest month of the year, and somehow, for me, it always felt like the longest.
I remember sitting at my desk while we “celebrated.” We learned about Dr. King. Harriet Tubman. We watched Roots. We saw images of race riots. We learned about chains and auction blocks, fire hoses and dogs, and we heard spirituals and refrains from marches. Those people and those stories had a place because they were part of being Black in America. But it didn’t feel like we were celebrating.
I remember how I felt sitting there. I felt small. I felt like the non-Black kids pitied me... like the lesson was that people who looked like me were people things happened to. We were the ones who suffered. Yeah... I didn’t have the words for it then, and I barely have the words for it now.
What I don’t remember hearing nearly enough about was the joy. Black History Month didn’t seem to touch the richness of the continent my ancestors came from. It didn’t talk much about the ingenuity behind food traditions, the beauty of African architecture and libraries, intricate hairstyles and textiles, or the generations of brilliance, creativity, and invention that were also part of my heritage. Somehow, the story I absorbed was more about victimhood than triumph.
I’ve carried that feeling for a long time. And here we are in September many (many) years later and I’m thinking about it again.
Because right now, many Hispanic and Latino families in Chicago are living with real fear about immigration enforcement… and about whether they belong. That is real, and it is heartbreaking. As school leaders we know our schools cannot shy away from it, because the courage these families and communities are showing deserves recognition too.
But I don’t want a Latino child in one of our schools to sit through Hispanic Heritage Month the way I sat through Black History Month. I don’t want them walking away thinking their story is mostly about borders and survival. I don’t want them to feel like someone else gets to decide when their culture is worthy of celebration... or what is worthy of celebration. No Hispanic student should feel that their culture being given a few weeks on the calendar is some kind of gift they should simply be grateful for. Because Hispanic culture is already worthy of celebration… let’s make sure celebrate is what we actually do.
So maybe this is an opportunity for us, as school leaders, to think about what it means to celebrate first. Tocelebrate the language... including celebrating the...
