I know scores of black people who abhor February. It is not just the cheap brothers who don’t want to buy their girlfriend roses and take her to a mediocre restaurant that increases prices in the name of capitalism. It is not the sisters who cannot find anyone decent to be their Valentine. It is the whole gambit of black folk. In February, many black folk find no joy, only dread — fear of seeing their CEO stroll into the office wearing a du-rag as a tribute to their Nubian employees.

Many of us find February brimming with performative actions by corporations and elected officials; platitudes so hollow they could pierce body armor. Instead of earnestly wrestling with the past and using it as a guide to correct current problems and prevent future harm, February is harried through as an obligation of being a good corporate or private citizen.

The picture of the Democratic leadership kneeling, adorned with Kente-cloth stoles, will give the most stoic negro a bout of night sweats.

Some of you reading this now might feel a pit in your stomach as we stroll through the month. Allow me to be your mid-month shepherd as we continue to navigate this cringe-inducing month. I am asking you to reframe Black History Month as White History Month. It is a month where we discuss all of the pernicious and evil things white folk have done or allowed to be done and continue to do or allow to be done to black folk.

One year ago, I was hit with a thought so disruptive I was paralyzed and at its mercy. In the eons encapsulated in this fleeting moment, I realized that February was not Black History Month. It was the month we have designated to hold the mirror to America’s face and make it view what it has done and continues to do to Black people.

This epiphany led me down a path that, for me, was new. Once I reached my destination, I could appreciate that our history and future are separate from what was done to us and how we reacted. Instead, we are more than our struggle and pain. We are manifestations of the dreams of our ancestors who were afraid to hold such audacious dreams in their hearts for fear of being disappointed.

In my bloodline, there was a point where it was conceivable that one of my relatives strained to look back and only saw enslavement. When she dared to look forward beyond the horizon, she only saw enslavement for her descendants. This is my American story.

Yet, white people allowed us to escape the evil enterprise they had conscripted us to because they needed our might to prevail in a war so they could retain power.

I believe every mundane thing I do is Black history. Every act of love, self-determination, each vote I cast, and every time I sit at a restaurant, I am creating black history. Black history, for me, is the trivialities of life I indulge in. The way I experience the banalities of life is the manifestation of my ancestors’ boldest aspirations for their future progeny.

Each day is a celebration of Black history for me. Each day is another day I get to leave my imprint on the world. To create a ripple in the pond of life that might one day reach someone else's shore.

Slavery is not the story of black people; it is the sordid stories of rape, forced birth, forced labor, violence, and family separation that white people did or allowed to be done to Black people. It is the history of humiliation and dehumanization. Slavery is the chronicle of corruption created and cared for by capitalism. Slavery is not the story of my people; it is the story of those who oppressed my people and enslaved my people to build this country and now who want to omit from the annuals of history either their complicity in this evil institution or erase their connection to their slaver ancestors.

This was the reframe that I recently made regarding Black History Month. Most of the figures we celebrate would not exist without white supremacy.

There is no need for Harriet Tubman to be celebrated but for slavery. That is not to say a woman with that determination, fire, intellect, fearlessness, and conviction in her belief would not soar to dizzying heights if this cruel enterprise did not exist. However, we know her as the Black Moses in this forsaken land. She led enslaved people to the promised land where they could throw off the yoke of slavery and call themselves freedmen and freedwomen. Yet her legacy is tethered to the depravity of white slavers.

Emmett Till is remembered because this poor boy’s life was extinguished in the most sadistic and bestial way possible. A white woman, through her own deception, forged a death certificate for this beautiful black boy. A death warrant that she handed to her husband, who then gathered a friend and proceeded to stalk Mr. Till (he never was allowed the title of mister because of the time he lived and his youth. I would like to confer this title of “Mister” to Emmett because, in a world without white supremacy, he might be alive today.) like a deer, elk, or some other type of big game. It was not until they could isolate this young boy that they started to lynch him.

Why? Because they were white, and he was Black. Everyone who participated in the lynching of Mr. Till was allowed to live the rest of their lives free from any lasting consequences, but this little boy’s corpse was placed on display so the whole world could see the cost of racism.

We know about Mr. Till because of what white people did to him and what white people refused to do to his murders. Not to disparage Mr. Till, but we do not know if he would have been the household name he is now if he was allowed to grow old.

Would there have ever been a Malcolm X if Mr. Little (Malcolm’s father) had never been lynched? Would there even be a Nation of Islam if The Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s father was not lynched before his very own eyes as a child?

Jackie Robinson was not the best pure black baseball player during his time. He was deemed the best black baseball player with the temperament to withstand the taunts, slurs, and disrespect from his white teammates, coaches, his team’s fans, the other team’s players and coaches, and all of the fans of Major League Baseball.

Jackie Robinson did not break the color barrier; he was just the first black baseball player that white people allowed to play baseball with them.

That is the power of the reframe. It takes the agency away from some type of herculean effort displayed by a Magical Negro and correctly identifies the real culprit: white supremacy.

Every single record in baseball should have an asterisk next to it to denote these records were obtained when white people would not allow black people to play baseball with them.

Once I embraced this reframe of what Black History Month was about, it freed me to experience joy.

There is no joy in Jim Crow. The stories of John Lewis and his comrades being beaten within an inch of their lives do not cause me to marvel at their courage. I am bewildered by what type of animals unleash a torrent of blows upon a person who refuses to defend themself. What type of sadist monster participates in this type of carnage? Did they not know what they were about to do on Bloody Sunday? Were they unaware that the goal of the day was to beat as many niggers and nigger lovers as possible? Did they go to a police bar after work and buy each other rounds of libations? I wonder if they reenacted the thud of their billy club, splitting the skulls of men's and women’s heads open. Were they proud to be law enforcement officers that day? Did they ever have nightmares or dreams of raining a stream of blows down on black bodies and those who believe in equality and justice?

I find no joy in what transpired on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It is not the story of black people overcoming; it is a cautionary tale that not all laws are just, not all public servants serve the public and the depravity that resides in some men.

When my alma matter went to Alabama, and Sam Cunningham went HAM on the Crimson Tide, I don’t see that as a cause to celebrate. The SEC was segregated before that ass-whooping USC (University of Southern California) put on Bama. After the game, Bear Bryant asked the SC coach if he could borrow Sam and bring him to his locker room. He walked this black man into this segregated space. He commanded the attention of all players and coaches and said, “This is what a football player looks like,” and then excused Sam.

Just like that, the SEC became desegregated. It was the pride of a white man who could have ended the prohibition against black players any time he wanted to, choosing this time and place to desegregate college football.

He was that powerful. This ass-whooping bruised his ego. His desire to win more college football games fueled him to end segregation in college football.

Sam Cunningham and SC did not end segregation in college football. It was Bear Bryant’s craven desire to win that ended it. He could have continued to get roached stomp with his all-white teams by integrated teams like SC…but his ego would not allow it.

This is not a story of Black history. It is a story of white history.

For example, March has traditionally been labeled as Women’s History Month, but it really is an opportunity to show how toxic and violent the patriarchy has been and is.

White women (because they excluded black women) fought for the right to vote. They were beaten, intimidated, raped. They were subjected to all of this horror because they were not born with a penis. Finally, white men gave white women the right to vote.

March is not the history of women; it is the examination of all the things men have done and continue to do to subjugate and oppress women.

We need these months because people try to obscure the past. They try to diminish the cruelty of mass incarceration. They attempt to conceal the inhumanity of Jim Crow. They aim to erase the stain of the Black Codes. They attempt to transform the savagery of slavery into a gentle and noble practice.

All of this is done to avoid the consequences of their actions, to shield their ancestors from the illuminating light of truth and justice.

I am asking you for the rest of this Black History Month reframe it as the month where we do not celebrate black resistance, but expose the cruelty and unjust ways that the systems of oppression erected in this country brutalized Black people through poverty, theft, stolen labor, uncompensated and unconsented scientific/medical experiments, rape, over-policing, family separation, over-prosecution, over-sentencing, inferior education opportunities, pay inequality, disenfranchisement, and some many acts of inequity that there are not enough pixels to adequately capture them.

Start putting the onus back on those who created the problem, not the survivors of the hell they created or allowed to persist.

This is my ask during February.