by David Arthur Walters

Created on: February 09, 2009   Last Updated: April 13, 2009

People of various colors did not like the institution of a Black History Month in the first place, because they deemed it discriminatory. Why should black be the only colored month? Should not red, yellow, white, and brown have their own months too? Perhaps white might be excluded, since blacks got their own month because whites were doing most of the discriminating, not only against them but the other colors too. And maybe the reds, yellows, and browns should not have their own months because they already have quite a public history, with all sorts of great red, yellow, and brown men and women, and cultural achievements too.

Surely there must be some politically correct way of getting rid of Black History Month. Blacks certainly have their great man now in President Obama, and the fact of his achievement proves that black and white are equal colors. Never mind that our president is also white, because his whiteness is invisible, and that some blacks say he is not black enough - some say President Clinton was not white enough.

Well, I am in favor of keeping Black History Month around for a few more years. Although I am apparently white Manhattan blacks called me gray I like some contrast to the white history I am accustomed to studying every day. Besides, black is my favorite color because I look good in it, or at least not so fat, and if I were black I would not have ruined my skin trying to get dark tan.

Furthermore, no matter how you do it, getting rid of Black History Month will still be politically incorrect because the effort to dispose of black is in part motivated by wanting to whitewash the issue in order to ignore it. Declassifying things and people will not get rid of them. I recall how the now defunct writers' website, Themestream.com, hired themselves a professional librarian and had her eliminate the category Women's Issues.' I publicly objected with a brilliant essay, to the effect that women's issues should not be buried because then their political rights would be ignored, and that, besides, the category is a real money maker, especially when selling women's clothes, The essay was deleted by the editor and I was told I would not be paid what was due to me on past articles, on the grounds that my posting was contrary to the business interests of the enterprise. I wrote quite an essay about that, and sent it along to all the enterprise's advertisers, one of which was a government agency.

Now I hope the foregoing has not offended anyone, but I felt something should be said in favor of Black History Month before the liberal arts are deleted because everyone thinks everyone has been liberated.

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