This recent photo supplied by CBS shows Morgan Freeman talking about black history month in an interview ...

Freeman Criticizes Black History Month

By Associated Press

3 hours ago

NEW YORK - Morgan Freeman says the concept of a month dedicated to black history is "ridiculous."

"You're going to relegate my history to a month?" the 68-year-old actor says in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" to air Sunday (7 p.m. EST). "I don't want a black history month. Black history is American history."

Black History Month has roots in historian Carter G. Woodson's Negro History Week, which he designated in 1926 as the second week in February to mark the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

Woodson said he hoped the week could one day be eliminated _ when black history would become fundamental to American history.

Freeman notes there is no "white history month," and says the only way to get rid of racism is to "stop talking about it."

The actor says he believes the labels "black" and "white" are an obstacle to beating racism.

"I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man," Freeman says.

Freeman received Oscar nominations for his roles in 1987's "Street Smart," 1989's "Driving Miss Daisy" and 1994's "The Shawshank Redemption." He finally won earlier this year for "Million Dollar Baby."

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What do you think BV-is Morgan making sense here?

He's saying that the month should be eliminated & that Black history should simply be incorporated into American history at large.

He also said something I take exception to: That raclla labels serve to prevent unification.

i agree with mr. freeman's logic.

I know what he's talking about and can see where he is coming from...

"Remember, we weren't conquered. We were kidnapped. Benign neglect is just another cupcake in the bake shop this is our existance in this country." - Anonymous

I thought Freeman was making  sense when saying this:

Morgan Freeman says the concept of a month dedicated to black history is "ridiculous."

"You're going to relegate my history to a month?" the 68-year-old actor says in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" to air Sunday (7 p.m. EST). "I don't want a black history month. Black history is American history."

While I'll definitely agree that Black History is incredibly inseparable from American history, that doesn't stop it at all from being treated like a separate subject. 

I'd wager that most contemporary textbooks (and teachers) today simply don't go there, and we know that they traditionally haven't--pretty much playing into Woodson's own frustrations about celebrating the week/month in the first place.

But here's where I begin to think Morgan's  been picking from the senile tree:

Freeman notes there is no "white history month," and says the only way to get rid of racism is to "stop talking about it."

The actor says he believes the labels "black" and "white" are an obstacle to beating racism.

"I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man," Freeman says.

I'll assume Morgan is smart enough to know why there's no need for a 'White History Month'.  But WTF is this crap about not talking about racism to stop it? His comment about labels getting in the way smacks of  the simple-minded  "I'm not a Black American, I'm an American"-utopia talk that sidesteps the issue at hand.

Perhaps I'll need to see the entire interview to get a real grasp of what he's saying, but these tidbits have me wondering.

Well...... if he's talking about history in the class room at public schools then maybe he should sit in on a history class. The history classes I remember taking pretty much gave us the gist of what happened from Christopher Colombus to roughly the end of the Cold War. If this is to happen, then the whole way of teaching history needs to be reevaluated.

The mere fact that schools are still teaching "Fourteen-hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" should serve as reason to overhaul our teaching methods, but I digress.