The Need for Context in Black History Month

To the editors:

Hugh Liebert's "Black History Month Considered" (Opinion, Feb. 25) betrays a bias that views all cultural constructs of minority groups as invalid or inferior and, in addition, his anecdotes often paint the actions of black individuals as being instructive in understanding black Americans in general.

For Liebert, Black History Month is beneficial when we remember such figures as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jackie Robinson, who are agreeable to Liebert, but he becomes dubious when people glorify the Black Panthers and the "disreputable" Paul Robeson (these are characterizations which we would call very debatable and some of them are simply outrageous).

However, it would be ridiculous to denounce the study of all American history because it contains the story of the Ku Klux Klan. Black History Month is a claim to black cultural and historical equality, not a "silly therapeutic excess."

Imagine if Liebert had portrayed Hanukkah as the Jewish alternative to Christmas, founded on a "simple, alarming syllogism" that Jews share a common cultural heritage? Look at the diversity within the Jewish community and compare it to the same high degree of diversity within the community of black Americans.

This diversity does not delegitimize Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, nor does Kwanzaa's relative newness. No one, including "would-be wise man" Maulana Karenga, is insisting that all black Americans exist in the same social spaces. Kwanzaa is about certain core values and norms and very little about Africa. We hope anyone who comments on Kwanzaa has thoroughly researched the rituals involved therein. They will find that they have no basis in any actual African practices or religion.

Liebert does not note that racism, an ideology that views minority groups as culturally and/or biologically inferior, is also a social construction. At their core, Black History Month and Kwanzaa are simply cultural constructions drafted to fight against racism, the most irrational construct of all. They cannot be considered outside of that context. JASON B. PHILLIPS '99   March 1, 1999 The writer is vice-president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Black Students Association.