Is Black History Month getting watered down?

Veers into caricature
President Bush marked the month by holding a ceremony honoring modern-day black heroes including a New York City construction worker who saved a man from an oncoming subway train and an Olympic skier who lost her leg.

Black History Month "does caricature itself at times," said Linda Symcox, author of "Whose History?: The Struggle for National Standards in American Classrooms," about revising American history to include minority groups. Though she believes the month is a good thing overall, she said some events cross the line.

"If I were an African-American, I would be offended by having the month of February be some kind of palliative," she said.

Super Bowl, super opportunity
Proof that corporate America has discovered Black History Month came Feb. 4, when the Super Bowl for the first time featured two African-American coaches, Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith.

Both the broadcast of the game itself and ads between the action featured numerous references to the NFL first. Frito Lay had a commercial showing black families bonding over a football game with an announcer's voice saying, "We've got more than a game here. We've got history."

One Coca-Cola commercial played a blues piano melody and listed key moments in black history alongside a soda bottle, ending with: "Coca-Cola celebrates Black History. Especially today."

Some viewers said it was a fitting nod to Black History Month. "It was done well — it was subtle," said Lawrence C. Ross, a consumer strategist for Iconoculture, a consumer trend research company in Los Angeles. Other commercials, however, tended to be "ham-handed."

Parks felt there were too many ads highlighting black history. "With the first one, I smiled," she said. "By the third one, I wasn't smiling anymore. I wondered if they were exploiting (black history) and why."

Price of success? Commercialism
But, she added, commercialism is inevitable in American culture. "It's unrealistic in this culture to say that Black History Month should be noncommercial. This is how we do it."

Indeed, this month, you can even take a vacation linked to black history.

At Christopher's B&B in Bellevue, Ky., tourists can pay $137 per night for their National Underground Railroad Freedom Center package, which includes a stay in a "junior jacuzzi room" and two adult tickets to the nearby museum.

The promotion is part of a push by Bedandbreakfast.com to steer visitors toward 14 historic homes that have connections to the secret network that once helped slaves escape to freedom, said Sandy Soule, editor of the Web site.

"This is the first year we've done this," Soule said. "I think we're going to make this a tradition."

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