Celebrating Everything, All the Time

"BLACK HISTORY MONTH" is February, and don't look now, but, that isn't very far away. Like Einstein said: "I don't think much about the future. It comes soon enough". Soon enough indeed. But what's the point? When tracing "black" history, one simply cannot swing a dead cat without hitting "white" history head on. At least you can't in America, and neither can you, tragically, in Africa. Alas, the scourge of white-imposed European colonialism, slavery, and bigotry. History can be reasonably divided into categories geographically and chronologically, albeit a bit arbitrarily, but dividing history by race or gender, particularly considering the widely distributed and interactive nature of races and genders, creates categorical difficulties, and is dubious at best. Men, women, blacks, whites, so intermingle that to separate them in time, space and history is, at best, like taking salt out of saltwater; at worst, like removing Merry from Christmas. Affirmative action was intended to be a solution to a societal problem of long standing persistence, the shoving of racial equality down the throats of the American people, and it has had a positive impact, whatever one's attitude towards it. Sometimes one must be force fed for one's own good, medicinally. Black history month, granted, is also intended as a solution, an enhancement of cultural appreciation. But affirmative action and racial quotas are tangible solutions, and black history month is an abstraction, and runs the risk of distorting historical understanding. May we forever celebrate all twelve months, and may we forever study history and learn from it, as a whole, regardless of race, color, creed, or gender.