Celebrating Columbus Day and its Legacy of Genocide & Slavery

Columbus was a killer

Today many folks throughout this country will take the day off to celebrate and pay tribute to a man who set the stage for genocide and the slave trade here in the United States. Yes we’re talking about the man they call Christopher Columbus who is still being taught to us in schools as the guy who ‘discovered’ America.

The myth of Columbus being a great explorer comes at a time when we have History text books being re-written in states like Texas and being banned in states like North Carolina and Arizona..Rarely are is there any mentions of any of his heinous inhumane crimes or the fact that he was an inept explorer who got lost and wound up on this country he supposedly discovered..

Instead what we have gotten over the years are feeble attempts to rework Columbus’ image and make him into some great explorer or an Italian hero. What gets ignored are the millions of people all over the North and South American continent who have protested Columbus and use this day as a way to remind folks of Indigenous rights. From the huge Mapuche protests in Chile where more than 15 thousand folks showed up demanded a return to ancestral lands to the ongoing battles with the Idle No More Movement who just held a big march in Sacramento, California calling for indigenous self-determination , the honoring of treaties and sustainability to numerous movements fighting back and protesting the stealing a destruction of Native Lands via the KeyStone XL Pipeline.

The only thing worse than perpetuating the benign myth of Columbus is not talking about how our founding fathers were slave owners and how Thomas Jefferson’s celebrated mistress Sally Hemmings was a slave. When the Declaration of Independence was signed with the edict ‘All men are Created Equal’, those who were enslaved were seen as 3/5th human. Yes, today we must reconsider Columbus Day. We can start by changing the offensive name of that NFL Team in Washington DC and stop using Native Americans as Mascots for sports teams and military weapons.

Here’s a few reminders that have come out over the years…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il5hwpdJMcg

Below is a video of actor Benjamin Bratt who is reading the words of Bartolome de las Casas, a historian who described the atrocities committed against the Taino people of the island of Hispaniola via Columbus and subsequent explorers. These accounts were included in Howard Zinn’s influential People’s History of the United States

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KTgMALmY5A

The late great scholar Dr John Henrik Clarke gives a very thorough history lecture on Christopher Columbus and he forces of oppression he set into motion. He painstakingly details the rise of European slave trade into Africa and the rise of religious oppression, which was used to justify it. He talks about the genocide of native Americans. This is the first part of a seven part lecture…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avM3POsSzYI

Don’t be one to clown Columbus Day while cheering for that football team in DC talking about its tradition to use racial slurs for a team.. To do so is to further dehumanize people

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXeyH9bH4oE