Columbus criticism

“Fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

Most Americans grew up… “Fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

Most Americans grew up with this rhyme engraved into their heads. As part of the cannon of early education, 1492 ranks up there with “I before E, except after C” and “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pies.”

But just as the spelling rule has exceptions – damn you “neighbor” and “weigh”! – and Pluto has since lost its status as a planet, the story of Christopher Columbus isn’t as pristine as our kindergarten teachers had once told us.

Last Sunday, during the city’s annual Columbus Day parade, Denver police arrested 83 protestors. According to the Associated Press, the parade route was blocked with splatters of fake blood and piles of dismembered baby dolls. The people were protesting the glorification of a man who they believed was a “slave trader and who touched off centuries of genocide and oppression against native peoples.”

Their actions were in response to last year’s parade, in which marchers dressed up like 19th century U.S. Army soldiers, wearing similar uniforms to the ones used during the Indian Wars. Members of the Native American community compared this reenactment of a terrible time in their history to the hanging of nooses in Jena, Louisiana that is currently the topic of much debate.

For some reason, Christopher Columbus has popularly been seen as a hero in this country. Along with street names and monuments all over the nation, he has a national holiday, two state capitals named after him – Columbus, Ohio and Columbia, South Carolina – and a 15-foot statue facing the Capitol building in Washington D.C. And, as I said before, American children grow up believing that he has a place in the “hero” pantheon of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The funny thing is, Columbus never set foot in the land that currently makes up the United States. The closest he got was the island of Cuba, which he told his buddies back in Europe was a peninsula in Asia. He hit North America by accident, failing to find a quicker trade route to China as he had promised.

While he was there, he treated the natives as barbarians and thrust forced labor upon them. But hey, at least he was kind enough to leave them all with measles, malaria and smallpox.

For all of the things Columbus gets credit, he actually deserves very little. Aristotle, who lived about 17 centuries before the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria were even built, originally thought up the idea of Earth as a globe. Leif Eriksson landed on “Vinland,” current-day Newfoundland, Canada, almost 500 years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean. And Columbus’ claim that he had landed on Asia was not corrected until years later, when cartographer Amerigo Vespucci went and saw the land for himself.

This guy was a fraud and a bad person. So why do we still celebrate him? It’s one thing for young children to not understand the depth of his ugly history, like how the governorship of his colony was taken away from him and how he was sent back to Spain in chains, but aren’t the rest of us supposed to be educated adults? We all know the truth about Christopher Columbus, so why are we still ignoring it?

While 10 of the protestors in Denver were charged with resisting arrest, the majority of them were arrested for “interfering with a peaceful assembly.” That absolutely baffled me. The protestors stopped a parade, while Columbus devastated an entire people. Which act interferes with peace more, blocking a float or taking control over a land that doesn’t belong to you while enslaving its inhabitants?

Some Americans may see hating Christopher Columbus like spitting out apple pie or shooting down a bald eagle, but supporting his actions is irresponsible. Celebrating Columbus Day is like teaching children that slavery was just one big misunderstanding, or that the Vietnam War went just as planned. Bad things have occurred in our history, and it’s our job to let kids know what really happened.

So, instead of throwing parades and praising his glories, maybe we should spend next year’s Columbus Day remembering what really happened and honoring those who suffered from Columbus’ conquests. It may not be as fun, but at least it will be honest. I’d gladly lose an American hero for a healthy conscience in return.

E-mail Sam at seg23@pitt.edu. Just don’t give him malaria.