We've never had a Black History Month like this before
Peniel Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor of history. He is the author of several books, most recently "Stokely: A Life." The views expressed here are his. View more opinion articles on CNN.
(CNN)The end of February also marked the end of an utterly bizarre Black History Month. It brought us what for many was a long-awaited conversation addressing the ways in which America's discussion of racial injustice has regressed by decades. In a country where Barack Obama was President, public discourse is still dominated by enduring, pernicious tropes such as blackface, cotton, and "some of my best friends are black." Notably, the blackface and cotton episodes occurred in the same state, and featured the same couple: a month that began with Virginia governor Ralph Northam facing calls for his resignation after he admitted to dressing up in blackface ended with his wife Pam under fire for handing cotton to a group of black and white children on a tour of the governor's mansion and, according to the mother of a black child in the group, asking them to imagine being slaves in the fields.
