Morgan Freeman tells 60 Minutes black history month is ridiculous.   "You're going to relegate my history to a month?   I don't want a black history month.   Black history is American history."   He mentions the absence of a "white history month" and suggests that the way to rid ourselves of racism is to "stop talking about it."   "I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man," he says.

I always liked Freeman although I much prefer the character he portrayed in Shawshank Redemptionm to Driving Miss Daisy.   But I think the academy got it right when they gave him the oscar for "Million Dollar Baby."   That was a tremendous performance in the midst of a bunch of tremendous performances.

Freeman is spot on with these comments about racism.   Right now white people cannot say these things because of the lack of free speech in this society.   It really does take a black man to extinguish the flames of racism.

But I was thinking about this notion of "white history" vs. "black history."   In my own family history there is quite a bit of disparity among the various members of "white figures."   I am German, English, Irish, Scottish and Slovak.   Some of my ancestors came with William Penn, some came before him and many came after him.   Some relatives came in this colonial period from Germany, some more in the early 1800s from Ireland, Scotland and England.   Then some more came in the late 1800s.   These people had very little in common with each other in terms of motivation for leaving their native lands or in experience once they got here.   Some were killed by indians, some rode across the Delaware with George Washington, some took bullets in the name of the North side of the civil war, some worked coal mines of Pennsylvania, some helped discover iron ore in the midwest.   The only thing they had in common with each other was the final destination of their migrations, the United States.   Some were Quakers, some Anabaptists, some Anglicans, some Lutheran, some undoubtedly catholic, and some, perhaps many, not at all religious.   They came from various walks of life, some undoubtedly from minor royalty, some undoubtedly from servitude on farms.   In my family as currently legally constituted, there are also those who descend from slaves in this country.   Truth be told, we have more in common than the collection of our ancestors, be they white, black, Christian, atheists, or whateve, do with any of us.

My family's history is the history of the United States, Europe, Africa, etc.   Our history is the history of the world, not the history of some few dead white guys.   But our history has been determined in a major way by what a bunch of dead white guys did.   There's no denying that.   Our history has also been determined by what some dead black guys did too.   There's no denying that.   Should we only study those dead black guys one month a year?   When we study them, should we say we are studying "our black history?"   And then the rest of the year we can say we are studying "our history" or is that "our white history?"