I wonder if there are blacks in this country who truly believe that as of tomorrow, March 1st, no one will think about any contribution a black person has made in this country for a whole year.  It saddens me to think that there are people who really believe this.

Black History Month, which is celebrated each February and debated each February, ends at midnight.

March is, among other things, Women’s History Month.  I cannot imagine a month celebrating the contribution of women in this country wouldn’t include women like Rosa Parks, the black woman who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus, thereby becoming the mother of the civil rights movement.  March is also American Red Cross month, which likely wouldn’t have been possible without a black man named Charles Drew, whose research into blood plasma and transfusions has saved countless lives for generations.

So is Black History Month still needed?  No.  The lesson for today’s children should not be that blacks and women and Native Americans and every other group should be relegated to a single month; the lesson should be that our history is the result of people of many different walks of life, each contributing what he or she can, no matter what their gender, race or creed happens to be.

If we really want to make racism — and sexism and every other -ism, for that matter — permanently into the past, we need to treat everyone equally in the present.

But I expect we’ll still have Black History Month in 2010.