It’s Black History Month, the  national celebration of black people. In the spirit of Black History Month, Mercer University’s Quadworks hosted a Black History Month Panel on February 7 to discuss the Black student experience. Macire Arbot, a 20-year-old junior double majoring in international affairs and global development, is one of the people that helped organize the panel. She sees several reasons why Black History Month is needed.

“It’s important to remind our people of all the great things we’ve done in the community and throughout the world. Oftentimes those accomplishments get overlooked, and I think it’s important to remind our people that we are great, we are beautiful, and we do do a lot of amazing things. I feel like Black History Month is a reminder to all of us that we can keep pushing past all of our trials and tribulations,” says Macire Arbot.

Arbot said Mercer hadn’t had a Black History Month panel in a while and that it was something needed on campus.

“I feel like it was a good way to get the black community together to talk about the common things, to talk about our commonalities in terms of the struggles that we face and the joys that we share together. I feel like it was a beautiful thing,” said Arbot. “We talked about a lot of different topics. We talked about colorism, we talked about some of the prejudices that we face, we talked about ways we can deal with internalizing some of the oppressions we face everyday and we also talked about a lot of happy things. It was just overall a great experience.”

On a personal level, she thinks Black History Month is a beautiful thing.

“I feel like Black History Month is every month, because everyday I wake up and I look in the mirror, I see myself, and I’m a black woman. Often, that motivates me to keep going and to keep making a difference in my life, because other people will come behind me and the people who have also worked really hard to get me where I am today,” says Arbot. “So I feel like Black History Month is a way to continue to motivate our community and continue to let them know that they are good enough and that it’s not over.”

Black History Month is a month to celebrate the past, present and future. Perhaps one day, it will become so internalized to learn black history that the month will no longer be needed. Until then, whether you’re black or not, let’s engross ourselves in history to learn more about the present.

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