I had meant to talk a bit about this a while ago but better late than never, I guess. Minister of Social Rehabilitation Dale Butler outlined reasons why the adopted American concept of it was not applicable to Bermuda, primarily the fact that Bermuda has a majority of persons of African descent living here. Why shouldn't Bermuda have 'black history' tributes all year round, for example?
While we all know our news media is more American than Bermudian/British (why the devil are their dates put in the American format, anyway?), they utilize the American Black History Month concept to profile people and events (and get lots of advertising as well, of course) so that it seems as if the island was pretty much in support of the concept. I don't know if a poll has been commissioned yet but it would be interesting to see what it would turn up.
When it comes to Bermuda history (expanding this a bit) our news media overall does its part, I suppose. Perhaps it's not enough, but it's a worthy debate. Our TV stations air shows like 'Treasures' every now and then and I believe that our newspapers, such as Mid Ocean News, devote reading space to historical events and people. But I think it may be worthwhile to challenge the mass media overall to devote regular space (at least weekly, some groups probably already do this) to highlighting and recognising events and people who have contributed whether it be education, community works, sports, what have you. It's an idea.
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