COLUMBUS DAY: IT’S TIME TO END THE CELEBRATION

COLUMBUS DAY: IT’S TIME TO END THE CELEBRATION

By: JOHN MARCIANO

Each October 12th, millions of Italian Americans and other citizens celebrate the “discovery” of America by Christopher Columbus. Seventeen states do not recognize the federal holiday, however, including North and South Dakota, Hawaii, Alaska, and Wisconsin; and a number of California cities celebrate Indigenous People’s Day rather than Columbus Day.

Columbus is honored even though he did not “discover” America; he left a legacy of “greed, destruction, brutality, slave-trading, and murder”; and this celebration is shameful insult to Latin Americans, African Americans and American Indians.      The evidence documenting Columbus’s violence cannot be disputed. It is found in the writing of Bartolome de las Casas, the Dominican priest and eyewitness to some of the horrific atrocities during Columbus’s rule: “Endless testimonies … prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…. But our work was to … ravage, kill, mangle and destroy…. The admiral … committed irreparable crimes against the Indians.” It is also found in Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”; James Loewen’s, Lies My Teacher Told Me; Kirkpatrick Sale’s, The Conquest of Paradise; Hans Koning’s, Columbus: His Enterprise; and David Stannard’s, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World.

No reputable historian denies what happened in the Caribbean 500 years ago; the truth is as crystal clear as the Holocaust in Europe under the Nazis. Those who ignore the facts of Columbus’s butchery deserve no more credence and sympathy than Holocaust deniers, whose views are rightly opposed and ridiculed. Why do Italian Americans and other citizens continue to defend and honor Columbus? Why are students in many U.S. cities given a school holiday to honor some that began the 500-plus years of European invasion and conquest of the Americas? When will school districts, city councils, state legislatures and the federal government cease celebrating this crime and tragedy?

We do not celebrate the genocidal murder of millions in Europe; why, therefore, should we celebrate one of the major architects of the American Holocaust? Even Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, Columbus’s admirer and biographer, stated that he initiated a period of “genocide” in the Western Hemisphere.

The Transform Columbus Day Alliance (TCDA) of Denver, Colorado is one of the many groups engaged in educational and political efforts on this issue (www.transformcolumbusday.org); its fine statement of principles and historical review should be read by all educators and citizens. TCDA points out that before Columbus came to the Americas, he transported West Africans to Portugal as slaves; he then commenced the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, joined by his brother and son. His subsequent rule and violence as viceroy and governor of the Caribbean Islands led to “the first mass genocide of indigenous peoples.”

TCDA calls Columbus Day a celebration of “racist … cultural domination” that reinforces “theft, lies, murder, slavery and the destruction of … the environment.” Columbus’s legacy is one of “violence and death”; the national holiday teaches children to “honor a cruel and brutal man” and it encourages people “to ignore … racist practices” in the Americas and throughout the world. We should support the call to transform Columbus Day from one that “celebrates conquest and domination” to one that “calls for a future in the Americas without racism [and] exploitation….”

I am personally moved by TCDA’s call for solidarity with Italian Americans who do not wish to celebrate the genocide represented by Columbus Day  —  instituted as a federal holiday in the 1930s under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. TCDA applauds “the beautiful, positive contributions of Italians around the globe” and condemns “the history of discrimination … experienced by Italians in the US.” However, it urges Italian Americans to stop celebrating “colonization and slavery … by repudiating Columbus.”

A history of Columbus and the Americas that is built upon lies and myths denies young people their inalienable right to learn the truth about the past. How are they to grow to become informed and democratic citizens when this right is denied and racist myths about Columbus shape their education? It is long past the time to end our shameful celebration of Columbus and all that he symbolizes.

Let us join together with TCDA and those who celebrate “Indigenous People’s Day” to reflect on the crimes of the past and affirm our solidarity with Americans throughout the hemisphere.

John Marciano, Professor Emeritus, SUNY Cortland, is a past chair of the Tompkins County (Ithaca, NY) Human Rights Commission (1991-96). He lives in Santa Monica, CA.