Happy Leap Day. We cats have spent some time this afternoon thinking about Black History Month 2024. We don't know about you, but for us it was one of the most educational Black History Months ever.
Some of this was intentional. For example, historian and commentator Michael Harriot crafted a superb Twitter thread to teach followers about how the Dark Ages were only "dark" if you were talking about white people in Europe — that in Africa and the Middle East, brown and Black people were creating algebra, the decimal, and the concept of zero. (And by the way, it was the white Southerners in the antebellum US who were uneducated, not the Black people they kidnapped and enslaved.)
Some of it just happened in the news. The Trumpster defendant's attempt to besmirch Fani Willis and get her removed from her racketeering 2020 election case in Georgia brought Willis herself to the stand, where she schooled a whole bunch of us on things like why African-Americans keep stashes of money in their homes. Her dad, civil rights activist John Clifford Floyd III, explained further: "It's a Black thing," he said. "Most Black folks hide cash or they keep cash. You always keep some cash because I've been places and just because of the color of my skin..." Say no more, Mr. Floyd, point taken.
And then of course there was Beyoncé. The fury in MAGA world that an accomplished Black performer would dare produce a country album seemed like a headline from another world. Country, like any other major American music genre, has its roots in the Black experience. And then tons of people took her cover of "Texas Hold 'Em" and put their own special spin on it. Ain't America great? We cats PURR.
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