In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And what followed
was a bloody, greed-fueled cataclysm of slavery,
dismemberment, extortion, rape, child sex trafficking,
biological warfare, feeding living people to dogs, and
general mass murder. So then he got a federal holiday. Can we
not? Los Angeles has just ruled to change Columbus Day to
Indigenous Peoples day. Some people are pissed off about the
move, but not only was LA totally right to make this
decision, other cities, states, and the whole country would be
wise to do the same. Questions over the validity of Columbus
Day have been stewing for decades, and it’s time to put an
end to it for good. Columbus Day is not a great pillar holding up
American history. It’s the half deflated bouncy castle of
American history. Despite what you may think, this holiday is
only 80 years old. William Shatner is older than Columbus
Day! He’s a much better example of a bold explorer, and he was
on a soundstage! Julie Andrews is older than Columbus Day! Mary
Poppins, ya’ll! Both Sean Connery and Dame Judi Dench,
stars of my James Bond time travel fanfic, are older than
Columbus Day! It’s so recent, and such an oversight. The only
reason the holiday was made official was because back in
1937 a group of Catholic men pressured FDR into declaring a
holiday celebrating a Catholic male role model. It’s also
generally taken to celebrate Italian American heritage. I
have good news for you though, LA voted to name the day after
Indigenous people’s day, Italian Heritage day, and the entire
month of October is Italian Heritage month! If you are
Italian and proud of it, you can untie yourself from historical
thieving murderer Christopher Columbus, and instead celebrate
the over 5.4 million Italians who immigrated to the United
States since 1820! Or Amerigo Vespucci, who this country is
actually named after! You don’t have to let one horrible person
be the bannerman of your pride! Sad truth is, with the
Information Age we’ve become very aware of what Christopher
Columbus was. If you don’t count the native people - and I don’t
see why you wouldn’t, unless you don’t like to count inconvenient
non-white people, and don’t see the irony of shouting “We will
Not be Replaced” at the people who lived here first- Leif
Erickson got to the “new world” centuries before Columbus, yet
you don’t see Americans celebrating him every year with
jugs of mead. Columbus did not convince the world that the
earth wasn’t flat, this was commonly known since the time of
the ancient Greeks, as early as 6th century BC. Yes, Columbus
mapped the coasts of Central America and South America but he
never set foot on North America! He spent his life believing he
discovered Asia! He should be remembered not for his
incredible "discovery," but for doing things like demanding
food, gold, and sex with women of the Lucayan people of the
Bahamas, then chopping off ears, noses, and hands and again,
feeding dismembered but living people to dogs, until he got his
way. He forced people into labor, he sold women into sex
slavery and noted young girls could fetch an even higher
price, he chained people to his ships and let hundreds of them
die. He’s responsible for disease and starvation, that
claimed lives estimated in the millions. According to
US-History.com, “Even his most ardent admirers acknowledge that
Columbus was self-centered, ruthless, avaricious and a
racist.” This man does not deserve the same national
significance as veterans, Martin Luther King Jr, George
Washington, or even Labor Day Joe, a Labor Day mascot I
literally just invented! When we get new information, we should
be able to make better, informed decisions. A change of mind and
culture should happen. To keep something just because “that’s
the way I always thought it was” is a stupid rationale, and shows
your inability to adapt and apply critical thought. I’m not
saying Italian Americans and Catholics shouldn’t be
celebrated, nor that any race of people are innately better than
anyone else. I’m saying that while all groups of people
divided by race or religion or gender or geography or whatever
are imperfect, Christopher Columbus as an individual was a
shitty person unworthy of our national celebration. Perhaps a
group of people who, I don't know, maybe lived on this land
for thousands of years and have been historically displaced and
disenfranchised by the rest of us deserve a little respect.
They certainly deserve it more than that asshole Columbus. And
while we're on the subject, how about replacing one of those
confederate generals with a statue of Captain Kirk?! I’m Kim
Horcher, I wrote this, and you can follow me on Twitter
@KimScorcher, IG @KimHororcher, and on facebook @KimHorcherOfficial