From February 1st until March 1st, Black History Month, also known as African-American History Month, is celebrated all around the United States. A month for recognizing and celebrating the black community.
“I feel like here, Black History Month is like ‘oh yeah, it’s Black History month,’” Senior Logan Lightburn said, “We know it is, but we aren’t gonna talk about it.”
Lightburn is a member of the Black Student Association, a new club aimed at promoting black culture and history within the walls of the school. One of their first projects is being promoted on posters around school: Black History spirit week. From February 19th to the 23rd, Black History spirit week is aimed to promote black history and culture by encouraging students to wear certain clothing that represents parts of black history. In order to complete this goal, the BSA collaborated with the Renaissance class, a new class with a goal of promoting diversity around Har Ber. Together, they worked to create posters spreading the word about spirit week, with the goal of promoting Black History Month.
“We knew we wanted to do something for Black History Month,” Sabrina Garcia said, “We paired up with the Black Student Association and asked them, ‘Hey, how can we help you?’”
The Renaissance class, similarly to BSA, is a new class which aims to promote diversity of all groups within our community. The students spend time planning events to celebrate different cultures, as well as teaching kids about minority groups and their culture, while also promoting them as leaders in diversity.
“It’s a leadership class that’s focused on building the culture and community within the school,” Garcia said. “It’s making Har-Ber a better environment for every student so that they enjoy being at school.”
For both Garcia and Lightburn, these classes and events are important, because knowledge for different cultures is an important issue to address in school.
“There were so many clubs for different things. Why not have one to help with seeing our culture?” Lightburn said. “One of the main reasons we wanted to do Black History spirit week was to show like ‘Hey guys, it’s Black History Month, let’s be excited.’”
According to Garcia, promoting culture and diversity is extremely important within the school.
“I think any school needs to work on it to a point, and that does not necessarily mean race.” Garicia said. “ It could just be whether it’s with disabilities or just in general and that any person feels welcomed.”
These events will help fix the issue of a lack of cultural knowledge in school, and serve to educate people on these different cultures. Even the people involved in making the project ended up learning something new.
“During preparation for the month, I learned so much stuff I didn’t even know.So I think the goal honestly was to just learn more,” Lightburn said.
However, promoting diversity will not stop after this month, as both clubs have planned more for the future.
“This is only our first year doing it, so I’m hoping as the years go on, we get more participation,” Garcia said.
According to students and faculty, for most schools, diversity can be a crucial issue, and many wish that students further understood the different cultures in their community. The Black Student Association, the Renaissance class and others serve to promote this idea and spread the message of inclusivity, now and in the future.