Columbus Day is an endangered species.
As we've written in the past, college campuses across the country donot acknowledge it; cities and towns have replaced it or ignored itand many of its parades have been canceled. Why? Because Columbus is
un-PC. He is the first face of European America. He is falsely linked
to genocide, slavery and rape. He is accused of crimes that did not
exist in his time. He is a man constantly on trial- with many
accusers and few defenders.
Today's society wants to hold Columbus
accountable to present day standards and laws- not the standards that
existed in his time. In the legal field, this would be considered an
“ex post facto” incrimination- essentially that Columbus is
guilty of crimes that were not crimes when he acted.
This behavior by
society is akin to creating a law today that states “no one can
drink coffee.” Tomorrow, police come to your house and arrest you
because you used to drink coffee every day before the law was passed.
However, you have yet to break the new law- you haven't had coffee since the law was passed.
Oddly, our founding
fathers were brilliant enough to include in the Constitution that we
can never be tried in an “ex post facto” way. So, if it is good
enough for us, shouldn't it be good enough for people for whom we now
sit in judgment?
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| US Constitution: No Bill of Attainder or Ex Post Facto Laws... |
Society also wants us to forget the
fact that America was “Europeanized” and that part of that
process involved displacing many native peoples. However, this cannot
(and should not) be linked to Columbus. The persecution of natives
lasted hundreds of years after Columbus arrived here. Columbus was in
the Americas a few dozen years at best- towards the end of the 1400s and early 1500s.
What was perpetrated on the
natives of the Americas was a representation of cultural mores and
beliefs of the time. It was far larger than Columbus himself- it was
a European mindset of dominance. If Columbus were truly a “lone
nut” in how he treated the natives, then certainly conditions would
have improved after his death. They did not- they got much worse and lasted through to the 1800s.
| Genocide, Rape and Torture - Accusations without facts |
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly-
there are unsubstantiated, second and third hand evidence that Columbus committed these
alleged crimes. The belief that he had slaves stems from what few
documents remain of his voyage. In Columbus letters and journals, he
alludes to the natives being “ good servants” and “eager to
please.” He also sent natives back to Spain- to show the royal
court what he had found. Here is a direct quote from Columbus- which new age historians consider to be evidence of his enslaving people:
"It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good
servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become
Christians, as they appear to have no religion. They very quickly learn
such words as are spoken to them. If it please our Lord, I intend at my
return to carry home six of them to your Highnesses, that they may learn
our language. " (source)
People who want to reconsider Columbus
Day claim this is “proof” that Columbus was a slave trader. But, his tone is not hostile. Why would he send them back to Spain? Could it be because he needed to prove to the Queen of the
most powerful country on the planet she hadn't wasted millions of
dollars on him? He didn't have an iPhone or Skype- he needed to send
back living, breathing proof.
Columbus was a master businessman- and self promoter.
He knew he needed to finance return trips to the Americas. He was not
going to get those funds if he had told the royal court- “We
encountered natives who were very hostile and combative- we need to
send an army to establish a colony here.” Even if Columbus
experienced hell on Earth- the royal court was only going to hear
pleasantries.
And, truth be told, Columbus did experience hell on Earth. Some of the native peoples he encountered (see: Carib & Taino People) would have shocked even the most outrageous European- with their noted practices of 1) Human Sacrifice and; 2) Cannibalism But, why would revisionist historians care about these wonderful practices? After all, these people no longer perform these acts...that was years ago! We can't judge primitive people from our modern cultural values! Hypocrites.
If we are
going to judge Columbus by 21st century standards and in
turn ridicule him- then let's not stop there. Let's demand an end to
celebrating Washington's birthday and the Fourth of July- after all,
each of our founding fathers were slave owners. We should also burn images of Taino and Carib people in effigy- since they were cannibals and practiced human sacrifice. And as ridiculous as
these argument sound- equally absurd is deriding and ending Columbus Day.
ItalianAware-Home
I disagree with this thinking; yes, it is difficult to judge those from the past based on our modern standards, however, by this time, civilization was *not* new, and the people of that era *did* have a sense of wrong and right, and how to treat others - they merely chose not to extend those basic human rights to people of other cultures or religions (their own religion providing a moral compass, which they chose to ignore).
ReplyDeleteNot only that, look at the rest of Italy during this time period; Spain (the nation which Columbus explored on behalf of), and later France and England were colonizing, enslaving, and raping, etc., Italy gave us the Renaissance - a period of great knowledge, filled with forward thinkers who managed to leave a legacy of artistic, scientific, philosophical, etc. advancements to the World. And all of this was managed by a nation which suffered from abject poverty, politically disjointment, and foreign oppression (mainly from the French and Spanish). Clearly, not all people of this time period in Europe remained lost in the primitive thinking that belonged more in Ancient times than it did the Early Modern period.
That's what I don't get, more than anything - why do so many Italians and Italian-Americans feel the need to grasp at a very thin connection to this very dark period in history (which, if we allow ourselves to look past pro-American propaganda, and delusions of "manifest destiny", we can admit this period *was*) through Columbus, when our history at that time is so rich, and is of a period of great enlightenment?
I'm really of two minds on this. First off, Columbus was a bastard. He was. He may have said the odd complimentary thing or two, but overall reading his first-person commentary is frightening -- although not more horrible than many others who have been lionized by history. I really wish they had picked Filippo Mazzei rather than Columbus, who wasn't even sailing under the aegis of Italy when he got here. There's a zillion far more admirable people who could have been chosen.
ReplyDeleteHowever ... once again, isn't it funny how the darkest "white" people around are being made to take the rap for crimes that were overall committed by people who were far paler and wealthier than we, long before most of our families even arrived here? Convenient for the Betty Sue and Bobby Joe Trustfunds in this country.
Once again, we're in whatever category makes it most convenient for the wealthiest, whitest people here -- they crapped on the Native Americans, and they crapped on us when we got here and still do slander us, and how funny it is that they now sit in judgment and determine which peoples' suffering pleases them most, and who "gets" to have a holiday and who doesn't.
Columbus was chosen for us, and now it's being taken away from us, all by outsiders. We're schlepped back and forth into whichever category makes it most convenient for the wealthy, white-as-snow power structure. In other words, "You're white so stop complaining, you bunch of damned ignorant, smelly wops." (Irony much?) Haunt some of the places online and see what's being said about us by some of the defenders of this decision, who count themselves as so ethnically and racially tolerant, but who come up with some of the most horrifyingly racist commentary you can imagine about the bunch of fucking stupid dago thugs who want "their" holiday.
And they're causing the problem. I have a firm belief that, had there been NO `Mericans-In-Charge in the room handing out judgments form on high, and had this whole thing been decided by a roomful of native Americans and Italian-Americans, alone and speaking directly to one another instead of being forced to exchange views through white-controlled media and city councils, we could have reached a decision that would have been satisfactory to all. It's the goddamned power structure that forces this to be a zero-sum game.
We need to unify and we need to do it YESTERDAY.