It is that time of year when love is in the air and the whole month has been dedicated to love and the history of black people. Happy Black History Month! It is a way for society to say that we have this time and this time only to celebrate who we are and all we have been through–with their permission, of course, and with a sugar coating.

It is honestly sickening to see the kind of stagnance our society is perpetuating when it comes to equality. Black people are still dying and there is still police brutality. Hence,there is no reason to celebrate.

Society fights for the equality of women, but when it comes to giving the same kind of protection every normal human being is supposed to be afforded, why are there still 64,000 black women missing? The fight for LGBTQ+ rights is a beautiful movement, buy can anyone answer why out of the 22 transgender people who were killed last year, 18 of them were black trans women?

Should black people keep living in this constant cycle of saying the same thing as time moves on and squeeze everything into one month? All the way from the motherland in slave ships, including those who were stolen then thrown off board, to those shot by police officers blinded by color–is there room for all those names that society refuses to mention in one month? Is there room for all the sisters and brothers out there whose names have just become chants that grow meaningless over time–as society has silenced their families and made their cases turn cold?

Champions of freedom like Malcom X, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks and Martin Lurther King did not sacrifice their lives so that we can take four weeks to celebrate. The perception that most people have of the change in society is just a facade that society has to make their unfair treatment of black people look fair and make the majority groups look like victims.

I believe that Black History can’t be celebrated in only one month, its too rich for that.