new york (ap)

As the United States again observes Black History Month in February, the act seems to inspire ever more, and ever more random, celebrations.

The concept of Black History Month has been widely embraced in pop culture, but it means some of the nation's most bitter history is also getting watered down into clichés or irrelevance. Some events have no historical connection at all.

"It has become very main-stream," said Sheri Parks, a professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland. "I do think it's been diluted. Some of this seems like an excuse to put things on sale."

In Maryland this month, there is a Black History Cheerleading Show. At Drexel University in Philadelphia, there is a black art sale and an African American Down-Home Soul Food Dinner.

Is this black history?

Though well-intentioned, the events are probably not what historian Carter G. Woodson had in mind when he created Negro History Week in 1926. He taught for decades that blacks must know their past before they could envision a brighter future.

By 1976, his organisation, now called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, had turned the week into Black History Month.

"The resistance was tre-mendous all over the country," said Maurice Thornton, a historian at the State University of New York at Albany. "There was a countervailing group who were doing their best to erase black history from the general public."

They lost the battle.

U.S. President George W. Bush marked the month by holding a ceremony honouring modern-day black heroes, including a New York City construction worker who saved a man from an oncoming subway train and an Olympic skier who lost her leg.

And then there are the cultural events. Each night this month, there are several black history television programmes to choose from, from Black Entertainment Television's Tupac: Thug Angel, about the well-known rapper, to Inside the Actors Studio featuring two-hour interviews with Diana Ross and Eddie Murphy.

Black History Month "does caricature itself at times," said Linda Symcox, author of Whose History?: The Struggle for National Standards in American Classrooms, about revising American history to include minority groups. Though she believes the month is a good thing overall, she said some events cross the line.

"If I were an African-American, I would be offended by having the month of February be some kind of palliative," she said.

Proof that corporate America has discovered Black History Month came Feb. 4, when the Super Bowl, the national football championship, for the first time featured two African-American coaches, Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith.

Bonding

Both the game itself and the ads between the action featured numerous references to the National Football League first.

Frito Lay had a commercial showing black families bonding over a football game with an announcer's voice saying, "We've got more than a game here. We've got history." One Coca-Cola commercial played a blues piano melody and listed key moments in black history alongside a soda bottle, ending with: "Coca-Cola celebrates Black History. Especially today."

Some viewers said it was a fitting nod to Black History Month. "It was done well, it was subtle," said Lawrence C. Ross, a consumer strategist for Icono-culture, a consumer trend research company in Los Angeles. Other commercials, however, tended to be "ham-handed."

Parks felt there were too many ads highlighting black history. "With the first one, I smiled," she said. "By the third one, I wasn't smiling anymore. I wondered if they were exploiting (black history) and why."

But, she added, commercialism is inevitable in American culture. "It's unrealistic in this culture to say that Black History Month should be non-commercial. This is how we do it."