I also wanna point out that it's a little ridiculous to say something like "Well, ALL mainstream history is WHITE history, so you've got YOURS" like there's just one country where all white people originated from. Oh glorious Caucasia, how I yearn to run through your mountainous fields again!
There are a lot of different kinds of white people, just as there are a lot of different kinds of black people - they may be a bit more culturally homogenized in this country, but in other countries, there are lots of different black AND white cultures. The fact is, a lot of WHITE people are marginalized to hell and back by mainstream Western education. How much of eastern Europe gets covered? How much of colonized Australia and New Zealand? How much of non-Greco-Roman Europe? How much of the renaissance outside of Italy? How much of the middle ages?
Even a ton of American history gets glossed over because it's too unpleasant.
Blacks and hispanics aren't the only ones getting marginalized (and Asians are even MORE marginalized, except for where they're relevant to American history, and is India even REMOTELY covered in high school?). My family and I immigrated here from Ukraine, and I'm STILL shocked when an American even knows my country exists, because I definitely never heard it mentioned once in school. You know who I DID hear a lot about? The Romans. And the ancient Greeks. (Who are actually, um, mediterranean and probably a good bit darker than the average white American anyway.) And England. And maybe a little bit of France. And then we mumbled about some middle ages and moved on to the renaissance which took us.... back to Italy! Because most schools only cover the Italian renaissance. Aaaand then we pretty much skipped right ahead to America, pausing only to return to the rest of the world for WW1 and WW2, and even then, only the countries significant to the war.
So if we have all these separate education months, rather than doing something wacky like, I dunno, integrating the important historical achievements and mistakes of EVERY ethnic group into the mainstream educational curriculum, it really doesn't do a favor to anyone. Honestly, I think it diminishes the very culture it's trying to spotlight, like "Oh, it's black history month, I guess we have to pay attention to them until it's over." What makes that month different than any other month? Do blacks not get to have history until February? Are y'all time travelers who made an organized effort to only be historically significant in February? (In which case, black people, you're my new heroes! Let's go have time traveling adventures! Wee! It'll be just like Doctor Who!)
I agree with the person who said that that's not integration, that's more like "separate but equal." Either it's important *all* the time, or it's not important and we're just throwing someone a bone to placate them. My vote is on "it's important," personally. There shouldn't be black history and white history and hispanic history - there should just freakin' be history. Any kind of [race] history should be a specialty class just like British history, French history, women's history, etc.
