Discussion for article #241658
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Without Columbus and those horrible, terribad evil supervillain Conquistadores and explorers there would be no America and by extension, no Me.
Therefore, I’m afraid that all the bad that happened to the original peoples is only 49.99% bad because the 50.01% part involves my existence which by my definition outweighs everything else.
Happy Columbus Day – however you choose to celebrate it, non-celebrate it, or revile it.
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“Indigenous Peoples” sounds lefty. What if you called it “Native Americans Day” and watched all the heads explode trying to explain what that means?
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Excellent article and suggestions (esp. using it to reconnect to and tell other stories! I’d heard about de las Casas from Dr. James Loewen’s excellent Lies My Teacher Told Me, but was unaware of de Vaca’s travels (I only knew the name), nor the Sicilian lynching.
It reminds me of Harry Truman’s great quote “The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.”
Thanks for the post!
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It’s been Indigenous Peoples day in Berkeley since forever.
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lol hell yes if we’re gonna rename a holiday dedicated to a man who committed genocide against poc, let’s make damn well sure that it still is completely fucking centered around white people goddammit
could this author be any more tone deaf or clueless, like how do you even think of shit like this and have so little self-awareness
We should observe the arrival of Columbus’s first voyage in the New World as “Exploration Day”.
There can be no doubt that this voyage transformed the entire world - it initiated the “global era”, the system of world-wide communication that has continuously expanded from that first small trip in 1492.
It is this permanent world-wide transformation that gave us the modern world that we should marking.
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I’m fine with having an Indigenous Peoples Day, although I hate the PC quality of the term.
But that doesn’t mean we have to get rid of Columbus Day—it’s just not an either/or decision.
The error is in judging Columbus and his actions by current standards when he lived in the 15th Century.
And as has been pointed out—without Columbus, there would be no USA.
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Some of the comments suggest that but for Columbus, America as we know it wouldn’t exist……maybe that’s a good thing. But it’s also a arrogant Eurocentric worldview.
The slaughter of an indigenous population was worth being replaced by a country birthed from barbaric slavery, and the oppression of women? Ok, Murica! Yeah!
Some of you liberals aint nothing but polite conservatives.
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No, it should be “Exploitation Day”.
His voyage kicked off a genocide of monstrous proportions (80% indigenous death rate within 20 years due to infectious disease, most notably: Smallpox) that is UNRIVALED in the history of the Human Race.
And no, he did NOT “Discover America” he stumbled upon the West Indies and was eventually JAILED for his truly awful management of the discovery, later dying a penniless, broken man, desperately trying to regain his former glory.
The Vikings had discovered “The New World” nearly a thousand years earlier, and even earlier than that the Polynesians were landing in South America.
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I have to dispute that claim. Columbus himself is irrelevant to the “discovery.” Any explorer could, and someone would have made the trip eventually. Now if you want to talk space/time continuum or all possible futures, that’s another thing.
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The RWNJ will think it means ‘poor folk’ and heads would explode— or implode.
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Celebrating “Columbus Day” is antiquated, racist, historically inaccurate, and insensitive to the Indigenous people.
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Note I never claimed Columbus discovered anything. Nor did I say a single favorable thing about the man.
But it is a plain fact that this voyage directly and immediately transformed world affairs.
Describing the epidemiological catastrophe to the New World Indians as “genocide” is abusing the term outrageously (there were many other deliberate acts of genocide that did occur that DO deserve the term). It was impossible to prevent the diseases of the Old World from ravaging the new if there was any significant contact between the two. Only science of the 20th Century (and later) has had any means that could have reduced this toll.
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As if most of us will ‘observe’ much of anything, regardless of its name.
Happy mid-October postal holiday, y’all.
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Indeed - and that is why I say that the fact of establishment of trans-Atlantic communication (“exploration”) which transformed the world should be the event to commemorate, not Columbus himself.
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The only thing I’m observing is that I have to work this evening because I’m not at a sufficiently-enlightened job to get the more minor Federal holidays off w/pay.
Yeah, I hear you. Save for a job I held for 2 years I never got it off.
No, the problem was far more profound than this and unsolvable.
The natives of the New World lacked the immune system genes required to resist any of the infectious diseases of the Old World. For this there was no solution or remedy.
No matter how “clean living” an Old Worlder might have been, as long as infectious disease existed it would eventually get to the New World, and once it did it would inevitably take its devastating course. Even in the relatively modern clean and sanitary world of the late nineteenth century virtually all of the deadly diseases that destroyed the Indians were still circulating throughout Europe and the European population of the United States.
Only never having anyone travel from the Old World to the New could have prevented this.
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