The GW community is celebrating Black History Month with a series of events focused on defining what it means to be signaled out as a person of color.
This year’s theme “Marked” aims to examine how African Americans have been targeted or “marked” throughout history and explain how they’re still signaled out today. Donald Bogle’s book Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: an Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films served as the inspiration for the theme.
“We celebrate Black History Month as a university-wide community initiative that allows faculty, staff and students to produce exciting and timely programming, participate in a wide range of learning experiences and share the amazing contributions of African American people to American history, culture and life,” says Michael Tapscott, director of GW’s Multicultural Student Services Center.
CNN Education Contributor Steve Perry was scheduled to kick off GW’s month-long Black Heritage Celebration earlier this week with an address about the nation’s education system, but the event had to be canceled due to severe weather preventing Dr. Perry from traveling to Washington. The event has been rescheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday in GW’s Betts Marvin Theatre.
Other planned events include film and documentary screenings, a boat cruise on the Potomac River, a dance performance, step show and a basketball game as well as several discussions focused on racial biases in the media, black male retention and black history.
Mr. Tapscott said cultural heritage celebrations like Black History Month are the “fundamental experiential learning opportunities for diverse and civil communities.”
“Multicultural student development theory tells us that it is especially important for young people to have a strong sense of ethnic identity. There is a correlation between the depth of knowledge of one’s roots and both the level of self actualization and the capability to understand and value the ethnic or cultural background of others,” says Mr. Tapscott.