Look, I have observed and commented with some ambivalence about all the different statues that are being pulled down. Not that they shouldn’t come down, but the mob-style manner in which it is sometimes done without really involving the community and the people chosen to represent them. I admit I’m less of a tear-it-all-down-now type.
But if it’s one mother***** who needs no discussion, it’s Christopher Columbus, and I am genuinely shocked to read people speaking in defense of leaving up monuments to this clown.
Why?
Because he never discovered ‘America’. I don’t mean he wasn’t the first — surely that needs no argument — I mean he NEVER. LANDED. HERE. AT. ALL.
Historical Reminder: Columbus’ excursions to the ‘New World’ were based around the Caribbean and Central America. The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria made their way around modern day Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti. Later he went further south, just grazing South America and passing Trinidad. I sincerely hope I don’t need to link or verify what should be basic grade school knowledge.
This guy didn’t ‘discover’ America, he discovered the Caribbean. If there’s anybody who should be debating the merits of this syhphilitic genocidal clown, it’s West Indians like myself — starting with the term, ‘West Indies’, cause he was lost and thought he hit India. Oh yeah, bright guy, Columbus.
So Christopher Columbus has *nothing* to do with America. He is no way a symbol of this country’s origins, though perhaps of its dark destiny. What he *is* a symbol of is the rise of European ascendancy and by definition of how that ascendancy was achieved, he is a symbol of genocide, slavery, and exploitation on an unimaginable scale. By his own words.
In Columbus’ own words:
“"they are artless and generous with what they have, to such a degree as no one would believe but him who had seen it. Of anything they have, if it be asked for, they never say no, but do rather invite the person to accept it, and show as much lovingness as though they would give their hearts…
their Highnesses may see that I shall give them as much gold as they need .... and slaves as many as they shall order to be shipped."
He didn’t invent anything. He created no great works of art or science. No treatises or philosophy. No new system of governance. No lasting acts of philanthropy.
But he did find him some gold and really, really, really nice people whose kindness and compassion could only be met one way: exploitation and death.
As an American, in defending Columbus you are defending the root of Modern European white supremacist thought. Period. He has no other claim to this country except as the pinnacle of white male European right to conquer. That’s it.
Never mind that if anyone of European descent is worthy of the moniker of ‘discovering’ America, it’s Leif Erikson, who actually landed on North America hundreds of years earlier. How many Americans even know his name? Hell, how many Americans even know whom the country is named After?
Lastly is the most obvious point. It is a slap in the face to the Native peoples of this country to revere a man who since he did not find North America, never even knew they existed. And yet where are the nationwide statues to honor their ancestors who found this country? Why don’t we know their names? I don’t say this even out of being a proud ‘progressive’. I say this out of basic human decency. This country absorbed and made anonymous the original peoples of this country by naming counties, rivers, cities, towns, STATES, of native language but with not much effort to educate its citizens on the voices that spoke those words first.
But I gotta name — repeat after me students - The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, with the rest of the class? That’s wrong.
Columbus must fall.
EDIT: Whoa, I thought this diary fell off the map after I published! Very grateful for the Community spotlight — DW