As February is coming to an end, one of the most important months is also coming to an end: Black History Month.

Black History Month is a celebration of the achievements that black people have accomplished over the years, and this month is meant for others to congratulate them for the freedoms they struggled for and achieved on their own. But if you really think about it, have we really gone far in reaching racial equality? Have they truly received the same freedoms as a white person?

In my opinion at least, the answer is no, but I had never truly thought about it until my fellow peers took part in a school performance. This performance was by African American people, and it started off with a son coming home from school and telling his mother that there was a police car following him. The mother then asked him if he had done anything wrong or anything that looked wrong, and he said he had not. However, this mother believed that things were changing, that they were getting better, and she took us through the history of racism in America.

She started with the original African American culture in Africa and how happy everyone was before the New World ships came to take them away. The ships took them to where all they did was clean, and these slaves never were truly appreciated for it.

Then, she went on to talk about how Africans finally were able to get an education with "new notebooks," which ended up being completely full whereas the white students got brand new ones. She continued to give examples of some good that occurred, but of course, these also disappeared because of either de facto laws like Jim Crow Laws or just the simple fact that people did not believe they had to support racial equality.

Finally, she explained that although African Americans have hope that oppression is disappearing and the times are changing, that still makes them believe that segregation and racism have not changed enough. There were people losing their families, sons dying in front of their mothers for no concrete reason and children being bought as if they were property.

In the end, the son came back and walked out the door to go to school. But the same police car he mentioned earlier had found him and chased him to death. And just before this happened, the performers lined up, listing the names of just a few of the numerous African Americans who died this same way.

This is happening in our world all the time, and it's happening now. Policemen kill colored people on the streets, but they then act like nothing happened. In the United States, colored people, African Americans, Indians, Muslims, Hispanics and any other non-white people have to work 10 times harder — if not more — to get to where someone who is white can reach easily.

The discrimination in our country is not gone.

And it's as if, even with all these laws in place, nothing is happening about the racism that still exists in this country. Some say that we are not the American dream. It's time to change that. We all need to stick together instead of turning on each other because we as oneare America.