Republican proposes list of mostly white people to be honoured for Black History Month

Wisconsin representative Scott Allen criticised for 'patronising' list

Representative Scott Allen has clashed with local Democrats over his approach to Black History Month (Rep. Scott Allen/YouTube)

In Wisconsin this February, one lawmaker wants to mark Black History Month by celebrating 10 Americans – including a Civil War colonel, a newspaper editor and a church deacon. All are heralded for their bravery, but most on the list are white.

The resolution, circulated this month, identifies a group of people integral to the state's Underground Railroad system, both slaves who travelled it and abolitionists who sheltered them. The author, Republican state representative Scott Allen, says it's a sincere effort to salute important historical figures, but several black legislators have called the effort disingenuous and said it undermines the purpose of Black History Month: to highlight the accomplishments of African Americans so often overlooked in classrooms and history books.

It's the third year in a row that Wisconsin's commemoration of Black History Month has devolved into a largely partisan struggle over issues of cultural appropriation, identity politics, privilege and power – a small-scale tableau of some of the nation's deepest divides.

“Why should you be leading what we do on Black History Month?” state senator Lena Taylor, a Democrat, said in an interview, referring to Mr Allen, who is white. “The fact that this even needs to be discussed is a reflection of where we are as a society. I wake up every day as a black woman, I'm not exactly sure what it is that Scott Allen believes he knows better than me.”

Mr Allen said he knows the optics are bad: “Here I am, this white guy, proposing this resolution that honours some white people during Black History Month, and those are easy headlines to put out there and run with,” he said in an interview. But his intent, Mr Allen said, was to craft a resolution that would also appeal to his white Republican colleagues who in the past have accused the Legislative Black Caucus of politicising the list of honourees.

“I'd rather we work together to pass a resolution the Republican caucus can be excited about,” Mr Allen said. “If we can do that one simple thing, then we can start attacking the tougher issues.”

The list includes six white abolitionists, four black slaves and unnamed members of the Stockbridge-Munsee band of Mohican Indians, and it's meant to “demonstrate our unity by highlighting an aspect of American history that has made and continues to make us stronger together,” Allen wrote in a memo to fellow lawmakers asking for co-sponsors.

But Ms Taylor, who is running for mayor of Milwaukee, said the resolution is patronising, and in an email to Mr Allen, she compared him to a slave owner trying to control how black Wisconsinites memorialise their history.

“Thank you Massa Allen for pickin' whose we should honuh suh,” Ms Taylor wrote. “We sho ain't capable of thinkin' fo ourselves, suh.”

If Mr Allen were serious about helping black residents, she said, he would back her legislative efforts to address racial disparity. Mr Allen, in response, has said he disagrees with Ms Taylor's solutions, but agrees that some of the state's biggest problems are the achievement gap between black and white students and the deep residential segregation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin's largest city.

The observance of Black History Month can be traced back to the 1920s, when the historian and scholar Carter Woodson created Negro History Week to celebrate the February birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. In 1976, the week became a month, and president Gerald Ford encouraged the country to “seize the opportunity to honour the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavour throughout our history.”

Ms Taylor said the idea of deviating from Mr Woodson's intention – by honouring several people who are not black – is offensive and ignores the fact that black history has been marginalised. "It's like responding to a chant of “Black lives matter” by saying “All lives matter,” she said.

“Black History Month, for me, is about making sure we honour the people who have not been recognised,” Ms Taylor said. “It's about black people being honoured in a state where that has not happened.”

“The fact that representative Allen wants to co-opt Black History Month and redefine what it is and who you recognise saddens me,” she added.

Mr Allen, whose wife is black and children are biracial, said that he doesn't want to diminish the history of African Americans but that he'd like to “get people of all races excited about celebrating Black History Month.”

“We so want to cling to labels in this country, we want to cling to identity politics, but we shouldn't be looking at this strictly because of race,” Mr Allen said, echoing criticisms shared by Republicans nationally.

Ms Taylor and other black Democratic lawmakers said they'd be more inclined to trust Mr Allen if his party didn't have a recent history of trying to disrupt the ceremonial resolution.

In February, Republican lawmakers blocked the black caucus's Black History Month resolution until Democrats agreed to remove the Milwaukee-born ex-NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick from the list of honourees. GOP leaders deemed Mr Kaepernick, who protested police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem, too controversial to include.

The quarterback's removal was “a textbook example of white privilege” and a “slap in the face,” the resolution's author, representative David Crowle, a Democrat, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In 2018, Mr Allen and Ms Taylor were at the centre of a debate over a Black History Month resolution, when Mr Allen complained that several worthy figures were left off that year's list – including David Clarke, the controversial former sheriff of Milwaukee County who has compared the Black Lives Matter protest movement to the Ku Klux Klan.

Mr Allen instead proposed an amendment that replaced the “exclusive list of names” so “ALL African-Americans who have contributed to Wisconsin are included and recognised,” the Wisconsin State Journal reported. Legislators later decided to pass two resolutions that year.

This year, the divide again appears intractable – the rare point that both sides seem to agree on.

“I think it's a reflection,” Ms Taylor said, “of how far we have not come.”

The Washington Post