on this special history of "our world" putting black history month in perspective. is it still needed? we'll debate that up next. >> there is nothing that prevents you from acknowledging that blacks have been part of american history since the beginning, during the other 11 months of the year.

what started as a week-long celebration has turned into a month-long event. today, we ask if black history month is still relevant. joining us for this discussion are howard doddson, chief of new york's public libraries shaumberg center for research in black culture, ebony jackson, a blogger for hello negro, a website they say is for colored people who have experienced problems integrating, and ellis kohs, author and noted "newsweek" columnist. thanks very much, appreciate it. mr. doddson, let me start with you in terms of what i wanted to get out of this interview and that is we talk often about black history and celebrate it obviously in february but my contention was that outside of maybe about ten figures, many of us, including schoolchildren who are being taught history know very little about

african-american history in this country. do you see that as people come through? >> absolutely. there's a general, i think maybe one of the unfortunate things that's happened as a result of black history month is it's been reduced to a discussion of a half dozen, maybe 20 black historic figures, and black history is obviously much, much more than that, and we have not begun to probe both the significance and character of that history, but also the impact that it's had on defining and in many respects determining the character of american history. >> ellis, what does that do to a people? you have done wonderful reporting particularly off of this continent, talking about the diaspara and people of

color, we know 20 people's stories well but the vast stories that have made us go silent often? >> i think there's many different things. on a psychological level it erodeles the sense of what's possible, a sense that aside from a few prominent black figures there's very little you can do as an african-american very often, and i think that's a consequence of this. i think in a larger sense, though, what it does is it erodes our perception of how this country has evolved, why we have the problems that we have today, and what we still have to overcome in this society today. howard made an interesting observation perhaps because of black history month to some extent the other figures who are african-american throughout the hemisphere are marginalized and the interesting question becomes, if you take black history off the table, does that make them less marginalized or does it make them more marginalized, and i think that's a crucial question as we sort of work our way through this issue.

>> i tell you, ed, one of the major disadvantages of approaching the history this way is that people don't see themselves as historymakers. one of the projects we've recently completed is called "in motion: the african-american migration experience" and it deals with like 13 major migrations of black folk, only two of which are involuntary. the other 11 are voluntary. those are individual people deciding that they can make a better life for themselves somewhere else, packing up, moving to a strange place and making themselves over, making those communities over, and making -- and making both african-american and american history, and we don't appreciate our grandfathers and grandmothers. >> to interject briefly, howard, part of that is how we tend to see history as a narrative of great men, and most of the great men and i say men because most

of the men as defined by american historians and european historians as well are white men and so that necessarily excludes a lot of ordinary people who have had a tremendous impact on this country. >> ebony, let me bring you in. what's interesting about your blog, hello negro, is the idea of what you try to do and that is have real conversation and debate around subjects, i'm curious, and how long has your blog been up? >> since 2004. >> so in those years, in those six years, how often does the question of history come about in conversation, because as ellis suggests, not just in the african-american community but in america, history to a great degree has fallen by the wayside. >> not as much as i would like to see, i think. the thing that pops into my mind in discussion of how history is giving us context, i think the lack of history has had

african-americans, young african-americans strive for things that are more acquainted with the american dream, getting wealth, being executives, having money, and then if you're not in a position where you feel like you can achieve those things, you may be achieving wealth in the ways that we see rappers and young people achieving wealth in items of clothing and jewelry and things like that, because they're not exposed to what historically has been achievement, so they are creating achievement out of what capitalism is giving them. for me, i think people are more so kind of obsessed with popular culture as it pertains to african-americans and how we have defined and ex-employmented our popular culture more so than our history in letting that define us. >> let me take a quick break and return with more right after this. >> i think we as adults kind of veterans of the civil rights movement have to take some responsibility for our failure to not continue to tell the story. [ children laughing ]

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ha ha ha! me. raah! yeah. i'll do it. me, too. sign me up. announcer: take on the tough classes now. you need them to prepare for college. back with more of our discussion on african-american history. you wanted to follow up to something else. >> yes, just a very brief observation, that our children's behaviors in some respects an outgrowth of my generation's behavior, those of us who were part of the civil rights movement actually took the position, quite frankly, far too many of us did, that we have, in fact, overcome these barriers.

we don't want to burden the children down with all these negative stories about our past. let us send them off to experience the american dream, and so children actually have been following that kind of path, and i think we, as adults kind of veterans of the civil rights movement have to take responsibility for our failure to not continue to tell the story, and keep the story and n the minds of the young people. >> i'm not so sure it's failure but i think very young people need context. there was a little incident at a party, a daughter we gave for her, mixed races invited, mixed crowd. a young black girl wanted to play with some white kids at one point and one of the white kids said "oh, this is whites only." this provokes a whole set of discussion among parents to what extent you need to take these young people and then basically

6 years old then and take them through part of this ugly history of how we got to where, got through that and where we are now, and what that remark really signifies and where it comes from, but i think you're absolutely right, howard, it's a very delicate sort of process of how do you explain that history, and put it in a context, without very young people saying, well, my goodness, we've been in such awful positions that must means i'm inferior somehow or must mean i won't be able to do anything in life and i think you have to -- and it's difficult. you have to communicate the history but at the same time communicate the possibility. >> but i think also, not just young people, because i hear a lot of times people talking about how much our youth need to know their history, i think that, you know, as a 32-year-old, i know people who are very hungry, they've come through the system of education, and it was very lacking when it came to black history, and so they go to black colleges with that, you know, that thirst for

knowledge, and you know, the black college of 1970 is not necessarily the black college of today and there have been programming changes and people have different priorities, because you want to send people out into the world who can achieve on a particular level, sometimes i think history kind of gets put to the back, so i think there are a lot of young people who are going out on the internet, who are having discussions and who would very much benefit from our elders, people who have more experience, joining that conversation and then also putting seeds in that fertile ground also. >> one other thought and pick up on your point. one other thought, morgan freeman mentioned this in an article and it is@choed by many that we should not relegate black history to one month. we shouldn't celebrate it only in february, because it does two things, it polarizes it to some degree and it allows others to not see it as american history. it kind of bastardizes it, if you will. >> i think there's some validity

to that but not a whole lot. there is nothing that prevents you from acknowledging that blacks have been part of american history since the beginning, during the other 11 months of the year, because there is a latino heritage month or an asian-pacific american heritage month or for that matter a woman's htory month. that does not stop you acknowledge that women have always been part of the history. >> yet in schools as you mentioned with your daughters, particularly in majority schools often they don't hit these highlighted points until february. >> well that's part of why i respectfully disagree with morgan freeman's point. it's not as if you take out the so-called black history month, and then all of the sudden all of these teaching materials automatically become imbued with what used to be called the black experience. they don't. it just sort of becomes lacking. one of the reasons obviously

that he started this whole black history week was the sense there was a neglected portion of american history that was important and was certainly a lot more neglected in 1926 than it is now. but even now, it's very difficult, very often within the majority context to find space to talk about the things that are important and relevant to creating what's the current black community. >> howard, is there a spike at the museum during february? >> absolutely. everybody has to get their black history month fix during the month of february. but our motto here is that every month is black history month at the schomberg center and we're doing something on black history every month and in response to the morgan freeman comment, usually what people do is, they say they don't want to segregate our isolate blacks off. we're not segregating or isolated. it's being segregated and isolated by the society and if and when the society has fully

embraced and incorporated our presence, our authentic presence in the telling of the history of this country, perhaps there won't be a need for black history month, but we're a long, long way from that. >> let me do this, take a quick break and we'll be back right after this. >> right now we're doing a lot of good in looking at history, reviewing history, being inspired by history but it's the actions that our history should inspire and the action that's going to bring forth the history of tomorrow, that we're lacking at.

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back with our final thoughts on black history month. mr. dodson let me ask you this, in relation to, and i'm admitting this is an unfair question because you need the context of history to really do this comparison, but figures of today versus those before the advent of 24-hour cable coverage of every little thing one does before social networking, will we see the same kind of iconic figures of the past that we grew

to know as children or does technology change that in your mind? >> i think what technology has done is speed the process of creating, i'll call them pseudoicons. the media has a capacity to turn someone instantly into something larger than life, for relatively little achievement and little accomplishment of any kind, so the technology, in my mind, is probably facilitating that kind of, if you will, iconic creation. >> and while that's true, ellis, the plus of the internet is the availability of history, even if it's not taught in school there at your fingertips yet at the other end of it is i say with the social networking, the advent of 24-hour cable coverage and the like, we see warts on people that heretofore you would not have seen, some of those iconic figures would not have

been as pristine. >> sure. >> in today's world. >> not just the technology, it's the whole approach to what you report on people that has changed over the years as well, so there are a lot of flaws that get reported and a lot of trivia that get reported that would not have been reported in the old days but i think something howard said is key and it goes, it actually goes beyond the issue of race. you needed to have accomplished at least something to become an iconic figure, in the past. now you can actually on a reality show become quite notorious. >> people are obsessed with instant celebrity and they really like instant celebrity because they feel like they, too, can then become an instant celebrity. i think the way that we could potentially harness this energy is to be involved in it more so. it's kind of like with black history month you had a void that needed to be filled and there seems to be a large void

in black leadership, people have been clamors for years saying where is the leadership, where is the leadership. >> harness that for something good. >> harness that for good and when you have the icons pop up you may have influenced some of the icons. back in the day with black history month you're not seeing yourself there, you have to interject yourself. >> let me take that to another level. what's the expectation that our community should have in terms of raising our voice to tell these stories more accurately, to pass down generationally, what is really our role in all of this? >> well, i think the most important thing for me is to develop the new system of a sense of value of our past experience, and of the truth of our experience in the evolution not just of this country, but indeed of the history of the world. we still see ourselves kind of as second class citizens in

american history, second class citizens in our world history, when n fact, we've been at the center of so much of what has happened, just very quick example, between 1492 and 1776, roughly the first 300 years of what they call the european colonization of the americans, 6.5 million people crossed the border and settled. of those, only 1 million were european. the other 5.5 million were african so if you're talking about the colonial period of american history it's basically african-american history throughout the hemisphere but we don't know that, and we have not taken that, taken ownership of that centrality of our presence in the making of this colonial period. >> let me close by giving both of you the same question, ebony, give me a sense what have you think the responsibility is of the community to make sure that history is told and told correctly? >> i think that the responsibility of the community

is to prevent a full and comprehensive review as possible. i think that right now, we're doing a lot of good in looking at history, reviewing history, being inspired by history, but it's the action that our history should inspire, and the action that's going to bring forth the history of tomorrow, that we're lacking in. >> i think our responsibility as parents and our responsibility as intellectuals is to provide both some context, and some connections, and in order to understand the huge wealth disparities in this country, to inner generational transfers of wealth which takes you right back to the history that's very different for most african-americans than it is for whites in order to understand the educational problems in this country, you got to understand something about the history of miseducation and the history of metrics in this country and how we got to where we are now and so forth and so forth and so on. we need to understand history, not so we can with a lallow in t

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before we go, our thanks to the shomberg center for lending us their digs. we want to thank you for joining us, greatly appreciate it. this has been our special black history month edition of "our world." if you have any questions or

comments about the show, logon to blackeerprise.com, and let us know. i'm ed gordon and thanks for making "our world" your world. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com