How to Celebrate Black History Month at Work - 7 Meaningful Ways

How to Celebrate Black History Month at Your Workplace

Remember, making sure that your workplace has proper equity is a step in the right direction. It will go a long way towards making sure that the company culture is fair and equal. 

If your organization celebrates women’s day and also pride month in its attempt to promote inclusion and diversity, then it is an absolute must that you also recognize black history month. This will show that you are also paying attention to people of color. 

It is important to realize and to make sure that you properly recognize the fact that minority groups have long been subjugated. Just because of the color of their skin, the texture of their hair, etc; they are often the victim of discrimination at workplaces. So, you ought to recognize that this is an extremely good opportunity for you to show support towards your black employees. 

Support Business Owned by African-Americans

Black entrepreneurs are often underrepresented. As a leader, the responsibility falls upon you to support these businesses. In this way, not only will you be actually financially helping local small businesses, but you will be involved indirectly in giving back to the black community. 

When you invest your money into small businesses owned by African-Americans, it acts as a very positive type of economic empowerment. 

Aside from just making those monetary contributions, you can try asking your team to shop online from businesses that are owned by black people. In this way, you will also be promoting those particular businesses as well. 

Familiarize Yourself with the Black History of Your Area

This is simply a fact; black culture and history can be found literally everywhere. What we do is that we often just do not know where to look or even if we do, we overlook it. 

The main thing that you need to have is the urge to properly inform yourself about such a sensitive topic. As an employer, you owe your African-American employees at least this much. 

In the upcoming Black History Month, maybe you should brush up on your history lessons. You should try to get to know as much as possible about the black people of influence that have lived in your area at some point. A good idea would be to go visit the local museum. There you will be easily able to find a lot of black contributors within your own community. 

Donations That Make a Difference

If you ever take a closer look at the work of activists who fight for the equal rights of black people, you will quickly find that they are often running pillar-to-post to be able to do their jobs. 

They really do have a lot on their plates. They have to tackle and fight the brutality of the police, they have to help black people get jobs; these nonprofits are in the thick of it all and they work day and night to be the voice of the oppressed.

In order to help you actually make a difference by making donations, we have compiled a list of organizations that are working from the ground up to help black communities. Make sure you go through the following list and try to donate as much as you can.` 

• Black Lives Matter and Campaign Zero
• Black Girls Code
• NAACP
• SisterLove
• Trans Women of Color Collective

Inclusion and Diversity Event

When the main objective is to support the minority workers you have, you can’t do much better than properly promoting inclusion and diversity within your organization. 

This should really be common knowledge but a lot of the implicit racial harassment that many people of color experience is simply down to ignorance. There is a lack of education amongst most offenders of this particular issue.  

Therefore, try to take steps and organize a sort of diversity workshop or a training program. This will enable you to educate non-black employees of the struggles that their black colleagues go through on a daily basis. It will also help them become more considerate and empathetic towards minority groups as well. 

Black Literature Should be Celebrated

It does not matter if it is fiction or if it is the nonfiction of any type, literature is often a tool used by the oppressed to make themselves heard, celebrated, and feel represented. This is because literature always stems from lived experiences and real stories. However, it is quite sad really to see that black authors are still less celebrated and recognized for their contributions than their white counterparts. 

If you really want to support black history month embark on this support journey for the black community, you can try promoting the classic and contemporary works of legendary black authors. They have quite a remarkable collection of great works.

During Black History Month, you could try and organize a company-wide book club event where you all read and discuss some of the great works of literature by black authors. If you are not familiar with the work of these authors, allow us to make a few recommendations.

• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• I Know Why The Caged Birds Sing by Maya Angelou (Autobiography)
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Mentorship Programs

This is just a fact; success cannot be achieved without help. In order to promote the black talent you have at your workplace, you could maybe try becoming the mentor for a young professional or a coworker who belongs to a racial minority group. 

All that you really need to do is to encourage young black adults or black youth to properly showcase the skills and talents that they have. This could be at work or it could even be at a community center. Ideally, it should be an event where the culture and values of the company are glorified. 

When you embark on a mentorship program, you will find that not only are you fulfilling your responsibilities as a community leader but that you are actually creating a newer generation of community leaders. These are the people who will take a stand against inequality and injustice in the future. 

Support Black Culture

The arts are a place where, ideally, there will be no discrimination based on race, gender, creed, caste, or sexuality. In a perfect world, it will be free and also bereft of artificial differences. It is also very important that we realize that from musicians to poets, these creative black people are absolutely vital in order to properly sustain black culture. 

Maybe this coming February, you can celebrate Black History Month in the workplace by showing tangible support towards the black community and the undeniable impact black culture has had on this nation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How do you honor black history month at work?

As we have talked about in this article, there are numerous techniques you can use to honor black history month at work. The methods mentioned in the paragraphs above ought to suffice. 

Q. What are employers doing for Black History Month?

In order to celebrate this momentous month, a lot of employers showcase stories, achievements, and experiences of the Black employees they have. Not only that, but they also tend to highlight these things of their Black customers as well and the communities they operate in. 

Q. What are Black History Month colors?

The official colors of Black History Month are red, green, and black.

Final Words

If you truly believe yourself to be an equal opportunity employer, there are some things that you must absolutely adhere to. This includes black history celebrations at work. This is a month that symbolically represents standing up for the rights of the oppressed and marginalized black community. By following the methods listed in this article, you can go a long way in showing your appreciation and alliance to this community.