Today is the day we pause to celebrate the man who discovered America, and who also raped and murdered many from the native population. When our nation celebrates brave Columbus, we won’t bring up the fact that he used native women as sexual prizes to his men, or that that the trail of dead was sometimes so long that people could navigate by them. We will celebrate his courage, but we will not speak of his greed, or mention the fact that he cut off the hands of native people’s who did not bring him enough gold.
The reason ending Columbus Day matters is because it reinforces the lie that white people discovered America. Every time we tell that lie we numb ourselves to the holocaust commited to the people who were already here. Everytime we tell that lie, we reinforce the idea that history as told by Europeans is the one narrative that matters, and that the voices of the colonized people are a mere footnote. Every time we repeat the lie that Columbus discovered America, we delay the day of recognition that we are standing on the rightful lands of the people we are calling immigrants or “illegal aliens,”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/06
Thank you for this. My adult son and I were having an email conversation about it being time and past time to discontinue “celebrating” Columbus Day and honoring it with a federal holiday. Then I read your blog. You said what Andrew and I were saying to each other, only you said it much better.