By Kelly Martin – Special to the Chronicle
The recent article, “Black History Month: Thanks, but no thanks” left a sour taste in the mouths of everyone whom I’ve spoken to about it. The main idea that I gathered from this article was that the worth of an entire people’s history is based on a Snapchat geofilter.

Saying that National Pizza Day, National Margarita Day or National Wine Day are more important to our generation than Black History Month is not only offensive to millennials, but also untrue. Most people that I know do want to do something to make all races more equal, and many are working towards that as one of their main goals in life.

To say that we are all “unwilling to take the first steps towards actually changing things” is not only incorrect, but also a vast underestimation of Hofstra’s population, as well as the 18-25-year-old demographic. The author of this piece then goes on to claim that if we just get rid of Black History Month, unity will magically occur. This is false and based on no real facts. If she is claiming that there is no one willing to do anything about equality now, what makes her think the problem will magically be solved by getting rid of a celebration of black accomplishments? The answer is that it will not.

The only way to create the “unity of the people regardless of race” that she mentioned is by bringing awareness to what the problems are, not trying to hide them by once again ignoring the positive accomplishments of African-Americans. Just because schools have been desegregated does not mean that the fight for equality is over.

There is still a long road to walk before we will be able to say that everyone is completely equal. 
If you want to raise your glass to something, raise it to Martin Luther King Jr., Jane Bolin, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Maya Angelou or Jan Matzeliger, most, if not all of whom, without Black History Month, would have had their accomplishments unacknowledged and been swept into the whitewashed society that we are desperately trying to leave behind.