Black History Month is racist

It was a tough four weeks, but somehow, white people everywhere got through Black History Month. We can now go back to listening to John Denver, watching "Friends" and eating our sandwiches with extra mayo for another year or so.\nBut believe it or not, the media does give due coverage to extraordinary black people like Condoleezza Rice, Morgan Freeman and even IU President Adam Herbert, and I can't remember reading any history book that didn't make it a point to emphasize the accomplishments of minorities.\nThat's why diversity events like Black History Month really rub me the wrong way. There's no such thing as "black history" or "Latino history" or "white history."\nThere is only history, and it's influenced by people of all backgrounds. Some might say that history is written by the victors, but when the victors feel guilty about what they've done to the losers and write the history books to suck up to them, history becomes awfully diverse awfully fast.\nNow, in all fairness, part of the reason there isn't too much positive coverage of minorities is because white people spent a few hundred years keeping them down and only now, a lot of them are getting an equal shot at success. But I would like to think that we're working on correcting that slowly but surely.\nLiberal guilt just isn't the way to go about it. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm rather insulted that every February we have to talk about how much sandwiches would suck if George Washington Carver had never invented peanut butter.\nSure, he invented a lot of other stuff, but that's really the only thing most people remember.\nI mean, do we bring up those things because they're that influential, or just because the people behind them were black? Can anyone name who's responsible for the peanut butter and jelly stuff that's already mixed together in the jar?\nI would go so far as to say Black History Month is pretty racist because it increases racial tensions. \nBy setting a month aside to focus on black accomplishments, it makes it look like only white people do anything noteworthy, so when a black person does something great, it must be an exception to the rule.\nIt also continues to stereotype white people as the oppressors of minorities when I think most of us would just like to leave that nasty slavery business in the past.\nAnd worst of all, it's racist because it continues to point out the differences in people when we should be pointing out the similarities. \nWhen my great-grandfather came to this country from Germany in the early 20th century, he sat his children down at the dinner table the first night here and announced "Kein Deutsch!" or "No German!" \nHe wanted his family to be accepted into the Great American Melting Pot, and he knew that being different just wasn't the way to do that.\nThat's not to say that people shouldn't be proud of their heritage, or even feel free to express it every now and then. Germans have accomplished a lot of great things in the arts and other areas over the years, not counting the time period from about 1933 to 1945. And I also love being Irish because it means I never get hangovers.\nBut the fact remains that I don't walk around drunk in lederhosen for any part of the year, disseminating the works of Wagner and Jonathan Swift to anyone in my way.\nAnd coming from German stock, I might know a thing or two about forcing beliefs on others.\nNow, if you'll excuse me, it's lunchtime, and I have a sandwich with extra mayo calling my name.