I watched a video that suggested we stop calling it “Black History Month” and start calling it “Black Heritage Month”. It caused me to pause. It connected dots I did not realize were floating around unfinished in my mind.
Because when I think about what we highlight every February, it almost always lives in the past. We talk about inventions. We name the ironing board. The traffic light. We revisit iconic figures like Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., even modern legends like Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson. We scroll through timelines of what was accomplished.
But what about now?
If heritage is something living, something carried forward, then what are we cultivating in the present? What are we building that our children will inherit beyond stories of struggle and triumph?
After I wrote my first draft, I talked with a friend whose parents were born in Africa. She identifies clearly with that lineage. And it made me think about language. About labels. About how we collapse identities into one word and assume they mean the same thing.
Black is not a monolith.
There are people born on the African continent. There are people born in the Caribbean. There are people like me, whose ancestry was disrupted by slavery and whose exact origin is unknown. African American is not automatically the same experience as someone who immigrated from Africa. I saw a video of a woman born and raised in Africa who moved to the United States for college. When asked to identify her ethnicity, she chose “other” instead of African American because she did not see herself as that category. She was African. That distinction mattered to her.
That made me sit with something uncomfortable. I do not know exactly where I come from. I cannot point to a country, a language, a tribe. I cannot name the soil my ancestors stood on before this one. So when people say “embrace your heritage,” I find myself asking, which one?
When I think about passing something down to my children, I draw a blank. I can cook. I love music. I can sing. I value education. But those are human traits, not something distinctly Black American that I can name and say, this is ours.
And when I look at how Black Americans are often depicted, I feel a disconnect. Too often the loudest portrayals are centered around chaos, conflict, exaggerated drama, or one narrow slice of culture. Yes, those stories exist. Every community has range. But they are not the whole story. There are Black teachers transforming classrooms. Black entrepreneurs building sustainable businesses. Black families cultivating stability and emotional health. Black professionals leading quietly with excellence.
We are doing the work every day.
Yet it often feels like we only celebrate when someone breaks a ceiling so high that the world cannot ignore it. Beyoncé. Denzel Washington. Tupac. A singular figure becomes a symbol and we rally around them. But what about the thousands of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in their own corners?
Why does validation feel scarce unless it is attached to fame?
In my own career, this is the first year I have felt genuinely seen for my work. Not because of my skin color, but because I am good at what I do. And some of that affirmation has come from other Black colleagues. That matters. But I have also sensed tension. Competition. As if excellence is a threat instead of a shared asset.
What if heritage meant collaboration instead of comparison?
We are already navigating systems that were not built with us in mind. Why compete with each other on top of that? What would happen if we normalized partnership? Mentorship? Shared growth? If heritage is living, maybe it looks like community in motion.
I think about language too. When I was younger, I was told I “talked white.” What did that even mean? That I understood grammar? That I valued articulation? It offended me. It implied that education was foreign to my identity. That moment probably shaped why I became a teacher. I never wanted a child to think intelligence belonged to someone else’s skin.
But even now, I wrestle with identity. I look at my friend who has a direct connection to Africa and I think about the clarity she carries. She speaks her family’s language. She knows her origin story. I have English. That is it. I want to learn French. I want to learn Korean. I want to expand. But part of that desire comes from wanting connection, wanting depth, wanting roots.
Sometimes I wonder if the American “melting pot” has not just blended cultures but dissolved some beyond recognition. When your history is something told to you rather than something you can trace, it can feel like you are holding fragments instead of a lineage.
And then I think about places like Black Wall Street in Tulsa. A thriving, self-sustaining Black community built through collective effort before it was destroyed in 1921. That was not just protest. That was construction. That was economic collaboration. That was heritage being built in real time.
So when I ask, if heritage is living, what are we growing, I am not dismissing history. History matters. Struggle matters. Survival matters. But survival cannot be the only inheritance.
What are we creating today that will be remembered tomorrow? What traditions are we forming? What businesses are we building? What art are we producing? What educational spaces are we transforming? What peace are we cultivating within ourselves?
Social media amplifies our voices, but voices alone are not legacy. Legacy is structure. It is community. It is intention. It is what remains when the trend fades.
I do not want our narrative to be limited to anger, fear, or reaction. Those emotions are real, but they cannot be the foundation. Where is our peace? Where is our strategic building? Where is our collective confidence?
Maybe shifting from “history” to “heritage” is not about replacing one word with another. Maybe it is about shifting posture. From looking back once a year to asking daily, what are we constructing?
If heritage is living, then it is not something we wait to receive. It is something we decide to grow.
Happy Black Heritage Month
