Kaitlyn Turner Staff Writer
February is known nationwide as Black History Month. This delegation of an entire month to the remembrance of significant African Americans throughout our country’s history is, by general consensus, very important.
It, as well as months such as Asian History Month and Hispanic History Month, is seen as a way of setting people of color equal to the white people who supposedly discriminate against them.
Sadly, people think that American History is the equivalent of White History, but the truth is that people of all colors have played a big part in making America what it is today—that’s why America is considered the Melting Pot of the world.
Racism is seen as individuals being treated differently according to their racial designation. How, by that standard, is it not racist to designate an entire month to honoring one race in specific?
We Americans have defined ourselves as “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
When we are taught to hold that as the truth and as the identity for our country, setting aside months in recognition of only specific portions of our population contradicts the simplest definition of who we are as a nation.
The very segregation that Martin Luther King, Jr. devoted his life to fighting against is being encouraged, and yet it’s all supposed to be in the name of honoring of him and other black people who made a significant contribution to our society.
Black History Month is unfair to not just white people, but Americans of all racial backgrounds.
With no White History Month, Americans have basically decided to honor White contributions to our society every day, while only paying homage to the contributions of minorities in their designated months. If we ever truly want to achieve the “equality” that people of all races have fought so hard to make the groundwork our present-day American society, we need to stop having months like Black History Month, and focus on acknowledging all of the different cultures that make up the patchwork that is America.
Instead of dividing history into months like Black History Month, we need to let everything that’s happened—no matter what color the skin of the people who did it is— be a part of American History instead.
