Since 1937, the second Monday of October has been federally observed as Columbus Day. This year; however, Los Angeles will make one small, yet significant change.
The day formally known as Columbus Day will still be observed, only the name will change. As of Wednesday, when the Los Angeles City Council voted on the decision, Columbus Day will become known as a day for celebrating “indigenous, aboriginal and native people.”
How This Plays Out
Doc Thompson, of “The Morning Blaze with Doc Thompson,” believes, “In the end, what’s going to eventually end up happening…there will be an Indigenous People Day in California.”
Doc could be right. After all, once this type of change begins, namely changing the official name of a federally observed holiday like Columbus Day, it’s difficult to know how far it will go. There have even been demands to remove statues of the famous explorer in New York City as recently as this past Friday night.
Mayor Bill de Blasio put the statue, which has been up since the 1800s, under review as part of his specially appointed task force designed to “remove symbols of hate in the city.” Protesters lobbying for the statue’s demise were carrying picket style signs that read in part:
“Columbus didn’t Discover America, he Invaded it” and “Columbus Statues: A Tribute to Racism & Genocide.”
Why Christopher Columbus is Now a Focus of Hatred
The following statement was made by Katy Schumaker, a letters and classics professor at the University of Oklahoma. It explains the negative emotions and beliefs that many have about Columbus today:
“There are plenty of other people who came and ‘found’ the Americas before Columbus. I think even if Columbus isn’t necessarily important as the person to discover the new world, his voyage, and then further, Spanish and Portuguese settlements, set up a chain reaction that made the Americas what they are today. Things like slavery, the decimation of native populations, all of those things were initiated by that first contact.”
This statement explains the motivation behind the crusade as it were to strike Columbus from America’s list of heroes. It comes not only from the fact that Columbus was not the first person to discover America, but also due to his perceived cruelty towards the indigenous people whose lives he altered forever.
The Danger of Renaming Holidays
Perhaps the case could be made that Christopher Columbus isn’t “worthy of commemoration.” However, the same case could be made for virtually each and every so-called American hero that exists if you base it only on the presence of negative character qualities.
When society begins to go through and pick apart the legacy of those who were formally praised, they will find faults in every life because they were all human. Pretty soon, there will be no heroes remaining.
Now, if it is proven that Christopher Columbus wasn’t the first person to discover the Americas and that is why individuals feel he shouldn’t be praised for accomplishing something he didn’t actually do, that’s different. If this is the case, the day should be renamed for the person who does deserve the honor.
However, that isn’t the focus of the protestors. They aren’t focusing on the fact that he is being honored for doing something he didn’t’ do, they are instead focusing on the negative qualities of his personality or morality that led to slavery and the end of life as they knew it for the indigenous people already living in America.
What Should Be Done
As the nation grows older, racism is attacked and society becomes more sensitive to the injustices that exist in the world, it only makes sense that the heroes of the past might come under intense scrutiny. It’s almost as if the world is looking at them through new eyes.
In fact, it’s important to remember that today’s society is judging them with eyes colored by today’s standards, which didn’t exist in their time. This makes it somewhat unfair to hold them to the standards of today, when the standards in which they lived weren’t at all the same.
Therefore, it would be wise for us to honor these people for what they did do right and learn from their mistakes, not erase their existence in its entirety, for in doing this, we as a nation essentially “throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
~ Conservative Zone
