I’m all for a paid day off from work (even though my company doesn’t recognize this particular holiday), or a department store’s excuse to have a big sale, but I don’t understand why Columbus Day is such a celebrated holiday. I came to despise the holiday after we studied Columbus in depth in my high school AP History class. Sure, in elementary school we learned that in fourteen-hundred-ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue. We learned about the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, and we learned about how the Europeans and the Native Americans got along so well and lived happily ever after (don’t even get me started on Thanksgiving) But did you learn about the mass genocide he committed in the Caribbean and the Americas? Columbus is single handedly responsible for robbing the Dominican Republic and Haiti of all its gold and riches, which some argue is one of the reasons Haiti is as poor as it is today. Why Haitians in Haiti celebrate this Holiday with pride is beyond me. Everywhere Columbus went he stole from the people there to claim riches for Spain. And he wasn’t particularly geographically accurate, as he thought many of the places on which he landed were India. Yeah, it totally makes sense to celebrate this guy!
And let’s not forget the millions of Native Americans who died during and the years following Columbus’s “discovery” of America. You can’t discover something if it’s already occupied and cultivated by people. The Europeans killed the Native Americans through force and the spread of diseases. Can you imagine if Swine Flu were a problem back in 1492?
This morning one of my coworkers said that Columbus deserves to be celebrated because if it weren’t for him none of us would be in America right now. In that case, perhaps there should be a Slave Master’s Day because I wouldn’t have been here today if those Europeans didn’t come snatch my ancestors from Africa, make a pit-stop in Haiti, and drag us to America. Perhaps Adolf Hitler should get his own holiday, after all many of the Jews that did survive the horrific Holocaust immigrated to America. Sounds ridiculous huh? So does celebrating violence, racism, rape, and murder, which is exactly what we do when we celebrate such a holiday.
