Columbus Day Thanksgiving: Reminders of Euro-America’s Brutality Against People of Color
By Solomon Comissiong
Year by year, there are myriad examples that should serve as blatant reminders as to exactly what the United States condones, supports, and is more than capable of—the Columbus Day holiday is one of those stark reminders. This federally recognized US holiday honors the life of one of the most reprehensible human beings this world has ever known. Cristobal Colon, more popularly known as Christopher Columbus, and the men he led—raped, murdered, and mutilated countless indigenous men, women and children from what is now known as the “Americas”. These facts are methodically hidden from tens of millions of obsequious Americans. America is a champion in the game of propagandizing the lives of people and events that, in essence, were responsible for everything from genocide, theft of land, to the mass enslavement of Africans. Everyone from George Washington to Andrew Jackson, and yes, even the devil-like Christopher Columbus; carry one or more of the aforementioned vile distinctions. Instead of being reviled, these kinds of individuals are celebrated with holidays, imagery on currency and with the naming of streets, cities, and colleges.
The US Thanksgiving holiday is yet another example of a nation that continues to honor the homicidal accomplishments of European so-called settlers that, not only stole land from Native Americans, they brutally murdered scores of them. These European barbarians then had the audacity to credit their animalistic carnage as some type of ‘divine intervention’. There should be no doubt that the deity the Pilgrims credited for what they did to the likes of the Wampanoag, Narragansett and Pequot people is red, and carries a pitchfork. They were devilish people whose deeds undoubtedly made Satan happy. There are absolutely no fairytale origins regarding the Thanksgiving holiday in America. It is a day better off spent giving one’s time toward social justice oriented work, rather than honoring in any shape, form or fashion a group of serial killers hell bent on destroying human lives and plundering land. This author has long cast off Thanksgiving and considers it a day better off in the bowels of hell along with the Pilgrims who, if there is any justice, are burning there right now. Thanksgiving’s roots are drenched in blood of slain men, women and children who were indigenous to New England. Honoring people that carried out these kinds of crimes against humanity is most telling of the society that is socially ill.
Humane and justice oriented societies, at the very least, try to move away from tainted pasts, however America embraces theirs. Instead of acknowledging the crimes of their past, and working toward the creation of an equitable society, the US does the complete opposite. The perpetrators of some of the most heinous crimes known to man have committed their offenses within America’s stolen and manufactured borders. Their crimes were also committed in the name of conquest and white supremacy. One thing that should never be taken as coincidental is the fact that the people doing the destroying of lives were white men, and the people catching hell were (and are) people of color. America has never truly respected the lives of people of color—it has systematically destroyed them. Columbus Day is symbolic of America’s legacy of destroying the lives of countless people of color.
Christopher Columbus, even though he never set foot on what is now known as ‘American soil’, is celebrated throughout US classrooms—-poisoning the minds of countless impressionable children. White supremacy ideology is passed down from generation to generation on a most routine basis. Eurocentric centered education, along with warped holidays, helps facilitate the transfer of ignorance, racism and mythology.
Columbus Day not only represents a societal embrace of mass killings of indigenous people, like the Arawak; it salutes a man who was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the African slave trade. As despicable as this is, it begins to make sense when we realize that America currently reigns as world champion in the mass incarceration of black people. It stands to reason that a nation that honors a devil, like Christopher Columbus, with a federal holiday, may also harbor some vicious inequalities and routine injustices. The September 21, 2011 state sponsored lynching of Troy Anthony Davis, a black man with overwhelming doubt surrounding his murder conviction of a white police officer, is commonplace in America. As a matter of fact, many executions of men of color occur extra-judiciously in America’s streets, by way of rogue police officers. Sean Bell, Oscar Grant and even little seven-year old black girls like Aiyana Stanley-Jones, are but a few of the myriad black victims, by way of state sponsored terrorism—otherwise known as police brutality. These murderous police officers are modern day disciples of Christopher Columbus, and their actions support this assertion.
Columbus and his men not only murdered and raped indigenous people of the “Americas”, they stole land and plundered resources, as they waged war on people unsuspecting of what these European thugs were capable of. More than 500 years later, America and her European minions are still plundering the land and resources of people of color. From Iraq to Libya; the US and its spineless European cronies are doing much of what Columbus did half a millennia ago—murder, maim and plunder. Christopher Columbus was a murderer, a terrorist, and a devil that created hell on earth for countless indigenous people. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The US government does its best to emulate Columbus, via its economic policies, its perpetual wars, and its lack of conscience. Columbus should never be celebrated, much less given a federal holiday anywhere. However, historical scoundrels like Columbus, are woven throughout America’s bloodstained social fabric as “founding fathers”, “great communicators”, and “discoverers” of land occupied by people tens of thousands of years prior. The US propaganda machine is a most effective tool when it comes to mass indoctrinating innumerable Americans to praise the evil and oppressive, at the same time vilifying the oppressed and the victimized—especially when they are people of color. The US has an unwritten rule that essentially places the lives of people of color on a much lower rung to that of their white so-called counterparts. America is not only a nation riddled with institutional racism, it is haven of white supremacy. These factors all contribute to a socially sick society that is routinely complicit with its government wages destructive wars, especially on countries full of non-white non-Christian people. And when some Americans finally get tired of certain wars, their excuse for ending them is almost always based on the draining of monetary resources and not on the fact that hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians are losing their lives. Ultimately, the color they care about is green, certainly not black or brown.
Christopher Columbus, Andrew Jackson, Ronald Reagan, George Washington, and many more idolized violators of human rights continue to receive unwarranted exaltation, all in the name of upholding America’s amoral value system. As long as the likes of these men are praised throughout American society, it will continue to be a socially and pathologically sick nation. A complete, value based, transfusion may be the only remedy that can radically alter an off kilter societal paradigm. America’s current value system, or lack thereof, negatively impacts much of the world—it certainly negatively impacts the lives of people of color within its own manufactured borders. Those living within the governmentally contrived fantasy world of “Post Racism” will believe that America’s policies do not operate against the direct interests of people of color. However, within the realm of reality, Euro-America’s policies have always operated against the interest of people of color, and their collective desires to determine their own destiny. People of color living within the US, are desperate to experience an America with a value oriented societal transfusion, one that completely eviscerates institutional racism and white supremacy. As it presently stands, America has several malignant tumors festering throughout its unequal society. Some of the tumors are that of capitalism, institutional racism, and white supremacy. These cancers must be completely removed if people of color are ever to experience institutional justice.
Ill-conceived Holidays like Columbus Day and Thanksgiving are far from harmless; they are as destructive as the people who are systematically honored on these days. Observing these days not only perpetuates Eurocentric and white supremacist ideologies, it further sets in place the basis for the destruction of people of color so long as it is in that name of Euro-American conquest. Euro-American conquest domestically destroys communities of color by way of gentrification, as well as internationally, via wars of aggression and one-sided economic policies.
When will we, as a society, mobilize, organize, and put an end to institutional racism, white supremacy and American imperialism, once and for all? When will we create a critical mass of social surgeons tasked at removing America’s societal cancers—-forever? When we do this, collectively, the likes of Christopher Columbus, and his godless holiday, will finally be a thing of the past—shunned, never to be celebrated ever again. However, if this is not done, we can expect each successive generation to be, in some way, poisoned by America’s socially deleterious elixir of white supremacist indoctrination.
Solomon Comissiong is an educator, community activist, author, public speaker and the host of the Your World News media collective (www.yourworldnews.org).
