It’s Columbus Day, and The New York Times’ way of celebrating it is to publish an op-ed by a Hispanic anti-Columbus freelance audio journalist who complains about there being a gigantic statue to the explorer in Puerto Rico. After all, she reasons, the island is in “the part of the world that suffered Columbus’s brutality firsthand.”
Columbus’s “brutality,” of course, is not what’s being celebrated or honored by Columbus Day. In 2019, before the Dawn of The Great Stupid, I re-posted both essays I have authored on Ethics Alarms about Columbus, the first, from 2011, explaining why it was an ethical holiday; the second, from two years later, taking the ethical position that Columbus is a problematical figure to honor. The comments the dual post inspired were diverse and excellent, and none of them endorsed contrarian post #2.
2019 seems decades away now, with the annus horribilis of 2020 yawning between then and now like, well, the Atlantic Ocean. One bit of the Times op-ed perfectly crystalized why I cannot embrace the anti-Columbus Day movement—-even Massachusetts is considering making it “Indigenous Peoples Day,” meaning the Mayflower is next on the airbrushing list—and it was a CBS story linked to it about all the other Columbus statues that have been toppled lately (while the one on Puerto Rico, where Columbus is mentioned in the national anthem, still stands) “explains”:
After George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25, protests flooded the country and forced America to reckon with its past. Many protesters across the country flocked to local statues, demanding their removal and in some cases taking them down themselves. Almost 60 Confederate monuments have been removed, relocated and renamed since Floyd’s death, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Yeah, THAT makes a lot of sense. A non-racial incident in Minnesota involving an over-dosing habitual criminal trying to resist arrest and ending up dying in the midst of negligent restraint by a bad cop makes people want to cancel an iconic 15th Century explorer. Brilliant. Yet it is also fitting, somehow: the same episode was permitted to launch the Great Stupid and its prevailing ethos that only the negative consequences created by something matter, the somethings including free speech, rules, laws, law enforcement, men, romance, white people, the Founders, literature, “Gone With The Wind,” gestating babies, industry, civilization, and the United States of America, among others. The one really bad line of my anti-Columbus (but not anti-Columbus Day) piece was this: “And who is to say that the world would be better today had pre-Columbian civilizations persisted without European interference?”
Ugh. NOBODY can say the world would be better today if those primitive cultures had not been overwhelmed by a superior one. Well, the can say it, but it would be incredibly stupid. A satirical article linked to a comment in 2019 made the point nicely with its facetious list of ways to “not be a bigot on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” The list (with explanations; read the piece):
- Perform human sacrifice
- Massacre neighboring indigenous peoples
- Collect scalps of your enemies
- Enslave other humans
- Eat people
- Steal everything
- Torture your enemies
- Complain about Europeans doing the same thing you did
The article concludes, “If you don’t do these—at least one of them—you’re a bigot.”
Well played.
Here are the two Columbus articles again. I no longer endorse the second, but it’s worth including for the counterpoint. It’s also worth including this Comment of That Day, though it wasn’t recognized at the time (mea culpa), by Steve-O-in NJ:
I hate to break the news to you, but this isn’t about Christopher Columbus and what he did or didn’t do. This isn’t about the Indians and how they should or shouldn’t have been treated. This is about two things leading to a third thing. First this is about dividing society, not just between the Italian-Americans and the Indians, but between those who choose to celebrate, or even who choose to leave it alone, and those who oppose to appear “woke” or “forward-thinking” or just not to appear racist. Second, it’s about an attack on the West, its history, and its traditions by those who hate it and all it stands for, and can’t wait to try to make this place into the illusory utopia people like Bernie Sanders promise. It’s from both those things that a few folks hope to score political points and generate political capital.
It’s rich to call those who choose to celebrate Italian-American culture and contributions racist. We were treated pretty badly upon arrival, and not really even considered white initially. The biggest lynching ever in the US was of 11 Italian-Americans in New Orleans. It was also a year before we were allowed to join the fight in WW2 because we “passed the test” according to FDR. We might not boast a heavily decorated UNIT from that conflict like the 442nd, but we do boast several highly decorated INDIVIDUALS, like John Basilone, Vito Bertoldo, and Ralph Cheli.
It’s also rich to call the third most influential person (after Christ and Mohammed tied for first and Guttenberg second) in history a villain for making everything that is America possible. Don’t give me that Leif Erickson was first nonsense, he established no lasting link. But while we’re on the topic, if Leif truly was first, doesn’t the guilt transfer to him? Don’t bother answering, the question was rhetorical. And please don’t throw out that pseudohistory about the Welsh Indians and Chinese villages on the West Coast before Columbus. Here’s one you can answer, though: Do you really think that, once it was known there was a whole untouched hemisphere, the rulers of Europe would have written some kind of treaty banning any European from sailing west out of sight of the Pillars of Hercules? Do you think such a treaty would have lasted more than a generation? Do you really think that the world would be a better place had the United States never come to be? Yes or no, please, no equivocating. If the answer is no, then why the fuss? If the answer is yes, why are you still here?
Viva Italia! Viva America! Viva Colombo!
The two posts….
Ethics Alarms 