The title of this post, “Black History Month Is Racist”, may be something that is a fire-starter. I am not trying to marginalize the struggles of the past, nor put down any of the people who currently identify themselves as African-American, black or whatever you may call yourself. You have pride in yourself and what you perceive as your own racial group. This is more of addressing racism than anything else.

Racism. What a really ugly word. You know, I never really got the whole race thing. So someone has a different color skin than me. Big whoop. That just means their ancestors lived in a different part of the world than others. Does that really make a difference to me? No.

So why does it to so many others?

February is Black History Month, a celebration of what I believe the politically correct term is people of African-American descent celebrating their great people and accomplishments. Singling out the accomplishments of an individual is great, and I have no problem with this. There have been some great achievements done by many, and people celebrating accomplishments should be a great reward indeed. However, what I do have a problem with is dedicating an entire month to remember that which divides people into distinct groups within a society where we are all supposed to be just… people. By drawing awareness to the differences in between us, there runs the risk of people going ahead and drawing a line in which people can start to take pride in, and in pride, people can breed racism.

Is this a healthy thing, or more detrimental?

True, everyone is a little bit racist sometimes. It does not mean we go around committing hate crimes. (If you have not got the joke yet yet, click the image.)

Is it healthy to all of a sudden have a Asian History Month as well? Hispanic History Month? Do we have a White History Month? Strangely enough, yes, America has the first two, and a Jewish American History Month to boot. I only found out about that particular tidbit after I looked at the Wikipedia article for Black History Month that the other two months exist.

I know this seems like a very weird statement to make, but I believe events like Black History Month only underscore the racial divide in North America that people believe exists. I know there is some very racist people in places of North America, and I know Black History Month is designed to educate those who may be exposed to racist teachings, but I ask: What good does Black History Month do? Why is it important to draw that out in one month, instead of taking that concept of education and putting it to work all year long? I can not see a clear advantage to an education system that teaches one racial profile for a month, then the rest of the history later on.

And here is the biggest question: does it work, or does it draw a line that makes people’s differences all the more apparent?

That is not the only thing I find to be racist, mind you. Most organizations that draw the lines of difference in between people can contribute to racism. We all know the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and a lot of organizations do have the best intentions in mind, but is it a good thing to show people with different colored skin than each other as separate, or is it the proverbial road we are traveling down? For example, the NAACP. I know it tries to do good things with their organization, and I will not try to call them evil or anything… but I start to question its relevance in the world of today, and I also question if it does nothing more than to help draw a dividing line of race in our culture.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you may notice that I do not think highly of Western culture as a whole. I believe we have gone into a period of stagnation, where we are looking for gratification over development as beings, on the precipice of regressing back to an earlier state of being. Hell, look at the last decade of cultural achievements. The highest grossing movies of the decade are mostly series movies (with the exception of Avatar). Television shows are getting remade, spun off from, and then marketed to death. Connections to the past as ideas and reimagining them is, quite frankly, lazy, and only in a few cases actually done right to the point where it can be called a success.

I wish we could be living in a world past racism towards our fellow man. As I say to others, though, I hate everybody equally, and I usually do not mean that as a joke. It does exist, though, and, if what I read in the news is correct, it is even institutionalized in some parts of North American society.

I can not see a difference in between these people. Can you?

I believe that a society should really be judged on how it treats its worst off citizens. But then again, that is just me talking.

Who is going to listen to me? I am just a lowly Canadian.