How should we remember Christopher Columbus?

Every year our calendars are filled with breaks and holidays we don’t really understand we just look forward to because it’s a day off. But why are we celebrating those days? What could be so important that we give gifts, or sometimes even miss school or work for them? On October 8^th every year we are off from school, shops are closed early and a parade fills New York City streets. Celebrating Christopher Columbus, the eager explorer that found the New World right? Wrong. Christopher Columbus was the leader of one of the biggest genocides in history; his actions are covered with this holiday. Christopher Columbus should be remembered as nothing more than a maniac that caused a genocide.

In your mind Columbus should sit right next to where you have Hitler or King Leopold. His actions were no different, but his destruction was worse. We cringe at the idea of Hitler’s notorious concentration camps and unmoral acts towards the Jew but was Columbus different? He too came from a culture that dehumanized Jewish people. “Between 120,00o and 150,000 Jews had been driven from their homes (their valuables, often meager, having been first confiscated) then they were cast out to sea” (David 62). If Columbus was from culture that Hitler reestablished, it is safe to say they shared similar thoughts about dominance in certain ethnicities. With that mentality Columbus then enslaved the Tainos he found when he started his expedition. “The troops went wild, stealing, killing, raping, and torturing natives, trying to force them to divulge the whereabouts of the imagined treasure-houses of gold ” (David 69). Similar to Hitler Columbus physically and morally stole from the Natives, he and his men felt superior dehumanized them in every form a person could be. “They rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry” (Zinn 6). Columbus and his men did nothing but infest a beautiful culture with hatred and greed, then nearly extinct its people. “By 1496, we already have noted, the population of Hispaniola had fallen from eight million to between four and five million. By 1508 it was down to less than a hundred thousand. By 1518 it numbered less than twenty thousand. And by 1535, say the leading scholars on this grim topic, “for all practical purposes, the native population was extinct” (David 77).

             We should remember Columbus for who he truly was not the text book or picture book Columbus. Columbus’ legacy is painted with smiles and lies that covered the actual colors that made up the story, red and gold. Columbus and his men weren’t looking for smiles, they were looking for gold, salves, and vulnerable people to convert to Christianity. Columbus and his men themselves would recite to the Natives: “I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of Their Highnesses. We shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as Their Highnesses may command” (David 66). We idolize a monster that had no intention in doing any good to the Natives. This is where you can sit Columbus next to King Leopold of The Congo.  The gold hungry Columbus slaved the natives to find him the gold on the island. “When the gold was delivered the individual was presented with a token to wear around his or her neck as proof that the tribute had been paid. Anyone found without the appropriate number of tokens had his hands cut off” (David 71). This tactic of cutting the hands of slaves for not bringing the right amount of gold was repeated in the Congo when King Leopold was in power. This vicious act was taught in history classes but the Columbus version was never taught. We tell our kids to idolize Columbus but we don’t teach them what Columbus and his men did to kids their age. “Sailors left behind got into fights with Indians trying to roam into the island taking women and children for sex and labor” (Zinn 4) We want our children to look up to men that took kids their age as sex and work slaves? Columbus and his men were nothing more than the guys we post on pedophile websites and printed warnings.

  We shouldn’t remember Columbus by giving him his own federal holiday. Columbus Day justifies his malicious actions, actions that we everyday fight against. Huey Newton and the Black Panthers fought to bring social justice for the black community where’s his day? What about every scientist that has found a cure, a planet, or an equation, anything that has influenced our living today for the good, where their day(s)? Columbus closes shops early and takes away school days, all that celebration for an ethnic genocide?  “Of all the horrific genocides that have occurred in the twentieth century against Armenians, Jews, Gypsies, Ibos, Bengalis, Timorese, Kampucheans, Ugandans, and more, none has come close to destroying this many-or this great a proportion of wholly innocent people. (David 75). Columbus nearly wiped out a population and every year we celebrate him, building his pedestal higher with statues, memorials, children’s books, anything to cover the reality. Every year we celebrate mother’s day and father’s day with cheap gifts and corny cards, but no day off to spend it with the people that conceived at the right moment to bring us here today. A Spanish member writes: “They tore babies from their mother’s breast by their feet, and dashed their heads against the rocks.” (David 71) So we won’t get a day of to spend with our mother’s and father’s but Columbus gets a day where we celebrate these types of actions.

Some may argue that the story of Columbus may be too graphic for kids so young to see or hear, but maybe kids should be learning about rape and what inappropriate touching is. They should begin to understand it is wrong to think that one race or ethnic group is superior to another. Children’s books influence how kids think, especially books assighned in school where you are taught to believe everything they say. “So Columbus read, but it was not just books that finally convinced him. He believed god himself had reveled the secrets of the world.” (Fritz 15)  If kids are reading books that tell them Columbus was special because God talked to him, but in their house they don’t believe in god, will that child feel less special or important? If Talking about Columbus is believed to be too graphic then they shouldn’t be taught it at all. Maybe the topic of Christopher Columbus shouldn’t be taught till the kids get older and they learn about wars and massacre.

We celebrate Columbus like we celebrate our parents. We give him a day and we celebrate his actions, the ones that every night on the news we watch and claim we shame. Every day we convict criminals just like Columbus, some on death row, some life in jail, but oddly enough we celebrate Columbus. His genocide extinct the natives as well as sucked out the riches of their culture. Columbus should be remembered as a maniac that caused a genocide.