It is #BlackHistoryMonth in the USA. #BlackHistoryMonth in the UK is in October, but perhaps some of my American friends would be helped, encouraged, challenged - maybe even changed! - by a few thoughts by way of what I have done/why I do it...

Why do I, a white pastor from Arkansas, USA living in London, England for the past 18 years have a blog with 24 articles with the tag "Black History" , 17 of which were written specifically for British Black History Month the past three Octobers? http://ryanburtonking.blogspot.com/search/label/Black%20History

To start with, it's not a big deal to devote 10% of a site to content about people from/descended from the world's second largest continent with millennia of history, and millions in the UK and US who are either descendants of slaves or from other diaspora communities.

But more to the point...
1. I like world history. World history matters, not just white history. Unfortunately, the latter sometimes pretends to be the former.

2. I love my local church, @gracewoodgreen, and local community. A significant percentage of people in both are black. I am not black, but I have a personal interest and a pastoral impulse to learn about the histories, cultures, and experiences of people I serve.

3. You can be Black and Christian. This needs to be clarified more than ever in the face of the extremes of colour/culture bigotry and colour/culture blindness, either from Afro-centric cults or professing Christians with Anglo-normative biases.

(continuing 3.) The best response to colour/culture bigotry and colour/culture blindness is celebrating colour/culture beauty in the context of Christological truth and cosmological redemption, ecclesiastical mission, and eschatological worship.

4. Exploring the intersection of Christian history with Black history affirms that Christianity is not a "white man's religion". It never was. It is for people from all the nations of the world, representing every hue in the palette of human colour.

5. Black history is often Christian history. The white-washing of Christian history is to the deprivation and detriment of all.

6. The overlap of Christian history with Black history almost always tells stories that demonstrate the overlap of the gospel with its holistic power and social implications, against any compartmentalising and isolationist mentalities.

7. The convergence of Black history with Christian history illuminatively illustrates biblical doctrines of human depravity and dignity, persecution and promise, suffering and victory.

8. White people can educate themselves/be educated to speak helpfully and hopefully in predominately black spaces about subjects often regarded/dismissed as particularly of black interest without an agenda that is colonising, fetishising, tokenising, patronising or paternalising.