Black History Month
Category
Liberation and Community
Date
02 oct 2025
Author
BME Officer - Comfort Oluwakoya
Read Time
3 min
Have you ever seen one of those flip books? They have an image on each page but as you flip through the book, the slightly different images create the illusion of movement.
If you flicked onto a random page, you would have a seemingly insignificant image that doesn’t even attempt to tell a story. Mathematically, it’s like being asked to work out the nth term of a sequence but only being given one term - it tells you nothing of the series. For the medics among us, imagine taking a history but being denied anything from before the patient presented at the clinic: no history of presenting complaint, no past medical history, no drug history etc.
Just as one frame in a flip book cannot convey an animation, and a sequence cannot be defined with a single term, a single moment is meaningless without its surrounding context. This is what it means to exist in the present without the context of the past. I often see attempts to do this and it is out of this deficit of perspective that narrow-mindedness is born. This is the birthplace of rhetoric such as ‘I don’t see colour’, ‘All lives matter’ or simply ‘Racism is a thing of the past’. These are all ultimately rooted in ignorance. To choose to believe that the past is somehow disconnected from the present is an aggressive form of naivety. It encroaches on our critical thinking, manifesting as cognitive dissonance; it’s an attempt to cling to the comfort of ignorance alongside the reality of history.
That is what Black History Month means to me. That is why this year we have gone with the theme ‘Past, Present, Future’. It is our attempt at showing they are all still intrinsically linked. To kick off Black History Month, we will be having a celebration event titled ‘Till Late’. For our ‘Past’ event, we invite Black alumni to share invaluable advice with current students. For ‘Present’, a debate night exploring how separate Imperial can truly be from Imperialism. And for ‘Future’, we’re engaging with Year 12s and 13s to give them an insight into higher education and being Black at Imperial. For more information please see our event listings. No matter your background, please join us in acknowledging and celebrating Black History Month.
Finally, I want to introduce you to a powerful African conception of time. Unlike the Western notion of time as an abstract infinite line stretching endlessly into the future, many African societies tie time to events, seasons, ceremonies and memories. Seeing time as something linear, something mechanical, and something extractive is not universal. Time is not abstract; it is lived and remembered. To exist in the present is therefore always to be in relation with the past. One of Africa’s greatest philosophers, John Mbiti, says 'Time is a two-dimensional, phenomenon, with a long past, vibrant present, and virtually no future'. So, this Black History Month, I invite you to reject the myth that the past is somehow severed from the present. Our task is simply to acknowledge the truth, not deny it.
By Comfort Oluwakoya, 2025/26 BME Officer