Black History Month: a celebration or a seperation?

Lauren Bana/Contributing Writer

A nation thrives off of unity, and if we, as a nation, are unified only amongst our own separate races, then we are only further dividing ourselves.

With the passing of Black History Month, we have come reflect on the time we took to celebrate our African American brothers and sisters. This month has been dedicated to their contributions to America as a whole, and we should certainly honor them, not only during the month of February, but year-round.

And we should honor every race every day, and can do so by respecting one another as people instead of categorizing our peers by race.

“Months like Black History month separate us as a country,” said senior communication arts major, Carlos Gonzalez.

It is similar to the way ‘cliques’ work in high school. There are the nerds, the jocks, the popular girls, the band geeks, the drama kids, and so on. They see each other differently because of how they act and where their interests lie. But if they were to see each other just as students instead of what ‘clique’ they belong to, then they would become more unified as a school. If they dedicated a month out of each school year to each individual ‘clique’, then that causes more separation amongst their peers.

I believe that the only way to truly unite as a nation would be to completely remove things like Black History Month so that we might stop looking at race and ethnicity as a quality in a person, and start approaching people as people.

Of course I won’t discredit the symbol this month represents. African Americans have endured years of struggle to free themselves from slavery and gain civil rights. They had to live under the spiteful hand of prejudice for years and, as an apology, have had the shortest month of the year dedicated to them.

Nonetheless, should we really have a Black History Month when there aren’t special months dedicated the other races of America? Did not the Chinese suffer just as the Native Americans underwent a mass genocide of their people, and neither of them have a month dedicated to them. Wouldn’t the acknowledgement of separate races cause for further separation as a nation instead of union?

By all means celebrate your heritage and pay homage to the people who fought before you to have the liberties you now enjoy.

In fact we should promote this type of celebrating, but let’s do it together, not separately as individual races or groups.

Singapore has an amazing event every July called Racial Harmony Day. On this day schools in Singapore mark the anniversary of their 1964 racial riots, and reflect on how far their country has come since that time. But they also use this day to promote the importance of inter-racial understanding.

I think the same can, and should, be done here.

If we’re going to finally set aside race, we need to start acknowledging people as people instead of categorizing them by where they’re from.