Black history only a month?

I remember the conversation as if it were yesterday. \n I was catching up with my best friend Terry after returning from an extended stay in the tiny south African country of Malawi. I handed him a hand-carved wooden elephant I had purchased just before my flight out of Nairobi the day before and said "Damn it feels good to be back. I kissed the ground when I got off the plane in Washington. I would rather spend the rest of the summer with a group of Black Panthers who hate me than another minute with the Africans."\n"Why?" Terry asked.\n"Because they're Americans. They speak my language, they live in the same culture, and they understand where I'm coming from," I responded.\nTerry replied, "Hmmm. That's interesting. Because if you asked most black people if they are American, they would probably say no."\nThe comment stopped me cold, partly because of my own ignorance and partly because maybe he was right.\nI suppose the title of African-American doesn't help. Occurrences of racism, under-representation in government and generally poor representation in the media also contribute to black Americans' identity crisis. But Terry pointed out one thing in particular that clearly illustrates why black Americans might feel estranged from their culture, and it is readily apparent in February.\nBlack History Month is a symbol of what is wrong with our country. National identity is taught through stories and history that tell people who they are and where they come from. In the past, blacks were written out of the history books. Their contributions, their struggles, their lives and their deaths made meaningless by the dominant Euro-centric mentality in this country that intentionally overlooked them. \nIn 2002, we make amends with Black History Month, the Afro-American Studies Department, and other symbols of marginalization, but not that much has really changed. \nPerhaps white people really want to clean the slate, but the painful legacy of slavery and racism is too difficult and embarrassing to live up to. This line of thought carries over into other arguments such as the debate over reparations for slavery. Many people think that a discussion on this issue only continues the legacy of slavery, and if we were to sweep the issue under the carpet, racism would just go away. Others such as David Horowitz feel blacks should be happy just to live in America rather than in a mud hut in Africa. \nThe problem with both these arguments is that they deny blacks what is due to them. \n Regardless of whether we admit it, we are all Americans. Our cultures are as intermixed as our history allows them to be, and it is about time Americans so incorporate the history of blacks into that of whites that Black History Month is rendered useless.\n Why would a white person care so much about this? Maybe I'm just a dumb honkie with 'a lot black friends'.\n The truth is that I have only one, but he's my best friend. His name is Terry. And its always bothered me that I could never relate to him at times when issues of race came up. Maybe the two of us will never realize that we are the same. But maybe someday our kids will be friends too, and hopefully they won't have the same problems that we did.