Make black history every day, I don’t need a month,” says Kanye West on one of my favorite recent hip-hop tracks, Rhymefest’s “Brand New.”

And it’s true, when you’re Kanye West, you don’t need a month to remind you about the rich culture and history of your race (if there is really such a thing.) But for the rest of us, people like me and other largely complacent white students, Black History Month is important.

Like anything, though, it has to be approached correctly.

The implications of designating a month to remember and focus the history of one skin color are dangerous and numerous. Why just one month? Why is it the shortest month of the year?

Doesn’t it just exacerbate the fact that for 11 months of the year, nobody cares about black people or racial issues?

All of these things are true, especially when Black History Month deteriorates into a shallow remembrance of a few people on a bulletin board in middle school. But I don’t think that Black History Month has to be shallow.

Black History Month began in 1926 when an enterprising professor at Harvard (Dr. Carter G. Woodson) decided to do his part so that “the world see the Negro as a participant rather than as a lay figure in history.”

He picked February for the first “Negro History Week” to include both Frederick Douglass’ and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays. Today, black history is celebrated for an entire month and we should make the best of it.

In a perfect world, we would remember all the histories of all peoples every single day. We would be nice to each other, give each other presents, and love each other unconditionally.

Unfortunately life is more complicated than doing all the things we should every day; that’s in part why we have Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and any other number of holidays that are supposed to remind us to be thoughtful and benevolent.

It’s not good that we stop being thankful after Thanksgiving. It’s not good that we forget about Martin Luther King’s legacy after that Monday when we have no school passes.

But the point really is that not all of us forget, and to be regularly reminded of how much we don’t think about these things is absolutely crucial. Black History Month gives us four weeks to pay attention, institutionally and personally, to the profoundly challenging history of African Americans in this nation and to understand the ways in which their triumphs are testament to the human will, spirit and ingenuity.

Opponents to Black History Month may claim that this month gives us the excuse to stop thinking about black history after February.

I don’t think that’s true. Every year, Black History Month comes around and I can reflect on all the issues I’ve been thinking about all year.

If anything, Black History Months reminds those of us who forgot – and reinforces the reflections of those of us who haven’t.