Truth Don't Lie: Reconsider Celebrating Columbus Day
Why not call it Happy “I Got Lost and Killed A Bunch of People For No Good Reason and Opened Up the Atlantic Slave Trade” Day?
Or “I Never Even Stepped On North American Soil But I Get All the Credit For Founding It” Day?
Or my personal favorite: “I Know, Like a Billion People Were Here Already But I’mma Take Credit For ‘Discovering’ America, Anyway, Day.”
Yeah, no. We don’t celebrate Christopher Columbus or the ridiculous holiday named for him. Check the video below to understand why, and, if your baby’s school is closed today in honor of the national holiday, make their time off count by taking a few minutes to do a little research on Columbus so that they know the truth about him, his journey, and the devastation he wreaked on the indigenous people of this land.
There has always been a "founders" day parade but the need to officially name it the Columbus Day parade goes back to the early 1900s when immigration from Italy was at its peak – The Italian communities needed to do something that would make them acceptable to "white" America.
I don't celebrate Columbus day and just wish they would convert it "Italian Heritage Day Parade" and be done with this notion that America had to be discovered and that Columbus was the first to be here.
Two thumbs up for this post! Columbus set the precedent for others to rape America of its resources, steal Native American land and subject African Americans to slavery. Why commemorate a murderer and enslaver? Canada is the only country in the Americas that doesn't celebrate this day…smart Canadians.
I don't celebrate it either but even today our Facebook status update was to consider using the day as a teaching tool about many different cultures – Italian, Spanish, American, Native American and Caribbean! It can still be a tool.
I suppose I was always a militant child but I remember getting in trouble in kindergarten for opposing the history they were trying to teach me. I felt this was not my history I was learning.
Wow, I totally did not know this. Thanks for the education. I'm enjoying the day off but I'll try to spend some time today trying to undue this 'mis-education.' 🙂
Excellent post B!