Black History Month a reflection on lack of diversity

"Hey, why isn't there a White History Month?"

Every year, we get at least a few people acting affronted by the fact that there's an entire four weeks devoted to awareness of the contributions African-Americans have made to society. They ask the above question, feeling slighted that for some reason, white European-Americans don't have their contributions to the world packed into a calendar month.

Never mind that when Carter G. Woodson created the precursor to this celebration 87 years ago, he intended for Negro History Week (as it was called) to be a temporary institution. The real goal, he stressed, was for African-American history to become a part of American history, as it should be.
This is why Black History Month still exists: that kind of inclusion hasn't happened yet.

But it's such a waste of time.

There are some people who think it has its flaws. Actor Morgan Freeman believes it does nothing but marginalize the race, while others in education or social justice believe it shouldn't be called "Black History Month" if there isn't an acknowledgement of blacks outside the United States. But a "waste of time"? Really? Do we consider the other eleven months of history that caters largely to white history a "waste of time," or is it the only history that matters?

America is too diverse a nation to really get away with the kind of whitewashing that happens in history, but it happens. We create months, weeks or days dedicated to minority groups without acknowledging that their stories are intertwined with the stories of the white males we spend so much time learning about in history classes. We give them their own limited time frame, and by doing that, we give those groups a limited view of how much their contributions mean to American history.

This goes for every minority - black, Latino, Asian, female, LGBT and everyone in between. Showing one side of the story isn't enough to provide a well-rounded view of what really happened, and dividing everyone into sections takes away from the bigger picture. And then we wonder why we can't understand or appreciate others who are different from us. It's because we don't learn about them the way we should. We think they're only important for one month out of an entire year.

I know I went through quite a few years of schooling before I learned about what really happened when Columbus landed in 1492 - and that his wasn't the first journey to the "New World" - and that was from outside reading, not school. We talked about slavery and the Civil Rights Movement in class, sure. But it wasn't until college that I got the hint that some of our nation's leaders didn't think of slavery as such a bad thing after all, or that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a crusader for the poor and spoke out against the Vietnam War in the years before his death. Even Black History Month celebrations in school managed to leave those important notes out.

But once I learned these things, I managed to get a clearer picture of what happened in the past to bring us to where we are now. I found history a lot more interesting, too, which is what happens when there's more than one point of view or storyline.

So rest assured, White History Month advocates. If you don't have a month to yourselves, it's not because we all think you're not important enough to deserve one; rather, it's because we simply refer to it as "history." No subtitle needed.

Angelica Rodriguez can be reached by email at rodriguez.record@live.com.