c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J.)

UNDATED _ In a recent speech in my hometown of Trenton, N.J., Jawanza Kunjufu, a noted educational consultant, joked about the perfunctory nod to African-American achievement given by the nation during Black History Month. It’s February, Kunjufu noted wryly, the month when all of America becomes black.

Yet, as the nation’s newspaper headlines suggest, the relationship between black America and the rest of the country remains tenuous at best.

For example, the Trenton Times reported recently that a group of black clergy called for a federal probe into the alleged”racial profiling”practices of the New Jersey State Police. The call came in the wake of reports suggesting that as many as 75 percent of people arrested by the state police are racial minorities.

In an April 1998 incident that received nationwide attention, two troopers opened fire on the New Jersey Turnpike on a minivan carrying four black and Hispanic youths, seriously wounding three of them. The young men, who had been pulled over by the police, were unarmed and en route to a basketball camp.

Promises by state Attorney General Peter Verniero to investigate allegations of racial profiling were met initially with skepticism.

Rev. Reginald Jackson, executive director of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey, openly questioned whether such a review would be objective because state officials previously denied that profiling existed. Jackson asked the U.S. Justice Department to conduct its own investigation and called for the ouster of Col. Carl Williams, superintendent of the state police.

On Feb. 19, following a meeting with Verniero, Jackson said he was”much more optimistic”about the state’s ability to investigate objectively its police agency. However, this optimism was buttressed largely by recent statements by the Justice Department that it has been investigating the New Jersey State Police for more than two years and its investigation would continue.

Another story in the Times describes the controversy surrounding a visit to the city by Khallid Muhammad, the leader of last summer’s Million Youth March in New York. Muhammad, whose penchant for making racially insensitive remarks led several years ago to his removal by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as the group’s national spokesman, was invited to speak at an event sponsored by the Trenton Youth Development Council as part of the organization’s commemoration of Black History Month.

However, when officials at Imani Community Church, where the event was to take place, learned that the controversial Muhammad was to be the keynote speaker, they rescinded their permission for the YDC’s use of the facility. The Youth Development Council responded by refusing to cancel the event, choosing instead to convene outside the church, where, according to published reports, Muhammad and YDC leaders railed on church and city officials, as well as whites, Jews and others.

That these incidents could occur during Black History Month _ and in the same location, no less _ says much about the times in which we live.

As Kunjufu’s comment cleverly implies, the national observance of Black History Month _ and related observances among other cultures _ have more to do with political necessity than with the hard work of racial healing.

To be sure, it is both right and appropriate that the entire country pause and remember the contributions and accomplishments of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and others whose systematic oppression has denied them their proper place in the pantheon of this nation’s heroes.

However, these obligatory observances do not excuse us from the harder work of being individually reconciled to each other across racial, ethnic and class lines.

It is not a case of”either/or,”but of”both/and.”If our national”observances”are only the stuff of political correctness, then our sight is faulty indeed.

DEA END ATCHISON