I got a question on my Formspring page that chided me for not celebrating Black History Month on the blog. I understand where it was coming from, but at the same time, while I like the idea of reminding people that African-Americans have contributed a lot to society, I don't like the idea of Black History Month vis a vis pro wrestling for two reasons. The first reason is why I'm not a fan of BHM on the whole - contributions made by black people to our nation's history should be remembered all year long, not just in the shortest month of the year. I feel like it's patronizing.Two, considering pro wrestling, there isn't a whole lot to celebrate. There haven't been a whole ton of really successful black wrestlers in wrestling history. I mean, you had Junkyard Dog, Tony Atlas, Rocky Johnson and then later on, Koko B. Ware and Ron Simmons, but until recently, the pickings were slim. Additionally, even as recently as the last airing of TNA Impact, the attitudes towards black wrestlers has been less than exempliary. The most shining example of the institutional racism that still kinda creeps beneath the surface flaring up was in the build to WrestleMania XIX, where Triple H brought out Booker T's mugshots from earlier in his life to paint him as a petty thug while getting no comeuppance for it, taking Booker out at WrestleMania in the blowoff, clean as a whistle. Yeah, Booker may have been okay with it, but from an outside perspective, from a fan's perspective... it was a really, really ugly angle. Not only that, but it took 46 years since the birth of the NWA before a promoter had the idea to put a World title on a black guy in Simmons.
I touched on this topic during Futures Week, mainly, about how minorities were pretty underrepresented both in the main event and really in the crowds, but with increases in both numbers, the future looked bright for them. I still stand by that, but to me, that only means that there'll be something to be written for BHM later on in the future. Right now, well, there's Ron Simmons as WCW World Champion, The Rock and Ron Killings as the only other black Champions and a handful of guys like the aforementioned Johnson, Atlas and JYD as rare featured faces.
So I wouldn't take the lack of a retrospective this month as disrespect from me. I'd take it more as professional wrestling, as always, being behind the times. Things are changing. In a few years, guys like Pope D'Angelo Dinero, Kofi Kingston, Michael Tarver, Kenny King, Rasche Brown, Sugar Dunkerton and even Human Tornado, should he step out of an all-too premature retirement, may very well be the leaders not only of wrestlers of their race, but of all wrestlers.
