Why celebrate Columbus, and who else to celebrate instead

October 9, 2017 9:37 AM

On October 12, 1492, Columbus made landfall in the "New World," reaching the Bahamian island that he named San Salvador (called Guanahaní by the native Taíno people). Why did the U.S. start to celebrate Columbus? To celebrate Italian heritage, and respond to anti-Italian sentiments. But why celebrate Columbus now? That's just history, and history is told by those currently in power. What else to celebrate today? Many cities celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day, especially in states that still call it Columbus Day, while some celebrate specific individuals, like Standing Bear in Nebraska and Po'Pay and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Puerto Rico's Birth of the New World, the giant Christopher Columbus statue, survived Hurricane Maria and stands for another Día de la Raza, and it will likely stand for the upcoming Discovery of Puerto Rico Day in November, which is celebrated elsewhere by Puerto Ricans to recognize their culture.

Elsewhere, more and more cities are celebrating Indigenous People’s Day instead of the terrible, tragic history and practices of Columbus. This trend is continuing a pushback that started as soon as people advocated celebrating a Columbus Day, back to the 1800s, when Washington Irving first published his best-seller biography, A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, which painted a positive picture of Columbus and introduced the myth of Columbus disproving the theory that the earth was flat.

posted by filthy light thief (45 comments total)

This is a good post.
posted by Fizz at 9:59 AM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

God, thank you for this post, FLF.

I was up all night looking through Pinterest’s large collection of pins related to this topic. It’s all rage inducing. I know my ancestors were complicit in this in some way. I know I have been a part of the continuation of appropriation and oppression — I played really racist versions of Tiger Lily multiple times for Peter Pan productions and created dream catchers for friends (though I took that really seriously and did everything I could as a kid to make sure they were accurately done). Hell, I was just watching The Music Man, one of my all time favorite movie musicals, and I had 100% forgotten about the fucking “wigwam dance” sequence towards the beginning of the film. I don’t even understand how it related to the sequence it was in, either. What the fuck does a mock “Indian” play have to do with the 4th of July? Oh, never mind, I know — another blithe interpretation of the benefits of genocide for white people.

Going to spend the rest of this week reading through all these links. Thank you again.
posted by Hermione Granger at 10:06 AM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

I work in an office that overlooks 5th Avenue, and the parade is right outside.

It's all Italian-American pride. It isn't even ABOUT Columbus.

Just did a twitter thread pointing that out, and suggesting that this means we can change the name since it's not about Columbus anyway - make this Indigenous People's Day, do the Italian-American parades on San Genarro and everyone wins.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:10 AM on October 9, 2017 [8 favorites]

Happy Thanksgiving!
posted by Sys Rq at 10:10 AM on October 9, 2017 [6 favorites]

On this day, let us honor the founding fathers of America: Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peek, and Gerry Beckley.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:12 AM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

More history: Indigenous People's Day idea goes back to 1977, at a U.N.-sponsored conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on discrimination against indigenous populations in the Americas. Fourteen years later, activists in Berkeley, CA, convinced the Berkeley City Council to declare October 12 a "Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People."
posted by filthy light thief at 10:22 AM on October 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

Hey, just this morning I was thinking how 45 is a new Columbus (racist, exploitative, genocidal, in thrall to foreign interests)! Thanks for this post.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:25 AM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

My high school history teacher told us that the District of Columbia, the Columbia River, and Columbus Day were all named to celebrate the peaceful Columbia Indian Tribe who lent early settlers a helping hand....
posted by miyabo at 10:35 AM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

If you need an Italian American heritage day may I remind you Fiorello “break the banks, the people will survive” LaGuardia is right there.
posted by The Whelk at 10:36 AM on October 9, 2017 [20 favorites]

Going to spend the rest of this week reading through all these links.

Notes: " That's just history" is a Fox News op-ed by Steve Kurtz why we should celebrate Columbus Day, so you can skip that one, and "history is told by those currently in power" is about Trump's idealized story of Columbus from his Columbus Day proclamation, so brace yourself for that.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:37 AM on October 9, 2017

The NYT op-ed infuriates me. To say that celebrating Columbus is a celebration of Italian-American history is basically to concede that Italian immigration represents a violent affront to indigenous people in the States, and then to celebrate that affront. Italian-Americans benefit from white supremacy; what is there to celebrate about that?
posted by lilies.lilies at 10:40 AM on October 9, 2017 [7 favorites]

I think that one reason people like to push this part of history to the side and pretend it doesn't exist is because to admit that this genocide happened means to confront that many of us benefit from this history. That we're in a position of privilege as a result of the racist and imperialist actions of our ancestors. It's uncomfortable and ugly. And it's hard to reconcile.

I'm glad you made this post. All of us could benefit from taking time to consider our place in our society/culture.
posted by Fizz at 10:56 AM on October 9, 2017 [7 favorites]

Pushing Columbus Day has always been distasteful to me. This is not history it's myth building.

Back when I had more influence at the food co-op, we celebrated "Pre-Columbian" day with specials on quinoa, chocolate, and various other ancient grains. These days we just don't mention the day as a holiday at all.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 11:02 AM on October 9, 2017 [5 favorites]

It's Indigenous Peoples Day here in Minnesota, officially for a year, I gave to an American Indian Womans center to celebrate.
posted by maxsparber at 11:07 AM on October 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

"In fourteen ninety two columbus sailed the ocean blue"

Alliteration trumps history.
posted by sammyo at 11:44 AM on October 9, 2017

missing the decolonize tag tho
posted by poffin boffin at 11:46 AM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

This is not history it's myth building.

I think that's the whole point. History is about facts and reason and learning from the past and all that stuff. Myths are about justifying why things are the way they already are and why you're doing the thing you intended to do all along.
posted by Sequence at 11:57 AM on October 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

If you need an Italian American heritage day may I remind you Fiorello “break the banks, the people will survive” LaGuardia is right there.

Part of the reason that Italian-Americans embraced Columbus Day is because of Columbus's deep connections (according to the dominant myths at the time) to America; it was a way to push back against common sentiment that held that Italian immigrants were outsiders who had no place in the US by asserting "no, Italians have been an integral part of America since well before the birth of the country" (again, as per the mythmaking prevalent then).

In that spirit, I would recommend Filippo Mazzei, an Italian who smuggled arms to the Colonial army during the revolution and coined the phrase "all men are created equal" as a replacement.
posted by Itaxpica at 11:59 AM on October 9, 2017 [22 favorites]

I observe Columbo Day, when there's always "just one more thing" to celebrate.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:21 PM on October 9, 2017 [29 favorites]

Comedian Pat Paulsen: All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian.

I vote Native America Day! To celebrate North America, before the arrival of colonialists, and to celebrate the native state of the lands before exploitation, the dense forest that existed from the Atlantic to the Mississippi river, and the people of this continent who endured and still must endure hardship from the obdurate aims of corporations, religions, and nationalists who do not include Native Americans in their hearts and plans.
posted by Oyéah at 12:24 PM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've always like the Indigenous People's Day. Twitter friend of mine suggested American Explorer's Day, which celebrates our history of explorers (Moon, oceanic, whatever). And now I think we should create both days! More days off!
posted by snwod at 12:26 PM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

If you wanted to continue the Italian-American and explorer angle, why not celebrate the continental namesake, Amerigo Vespucci, instead? He might have worked on behalf of the colonial powers, but he did not seem to have had negative relations with the indigenous peoples of the New World, studying them with respect. Plus renaming the holiday to "American Day" seems like a move that would be hard for right-wing holdouts to oppose.

There should still be holidays for indigenous peoples, though.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:53 PM on October 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

Right now the NYPD is guarding the statue of Columbus in Columbus Circle, wary of anyone trying to take it down or damage it. Around the clock. I don't know if this will stop today, or if it's a permanent situation.
posted by Hactar at 12:56 PM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

The Columbus statue in Los Angeles is covered up and fenced off today. The LA City Council have voted to celebrate Indigenous People's Day instead, but the change hasn't yet taken effect.
posted by yasaman at 1:04 PM on October 9, 2017

I love the practice of each state or city celebrating a specific indigenous people, so that we are not lumping rich civilizations into one. I would love to see Upstate New York use the day to celebrate the Haudenosaunee.
posted by SyraCarol at 1:08 PM on October 9, 2017 [14 favorites]

love the practice of each state or city celebrating a specific indigenous people, so that we are not lumping rich civilizations into one.

THIS IS AN EVEN BETTER IDEA!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:21 PM on October 9, 2017

Here in America, on the days we celebrate our cultural icons, we traditionally surround their statues with chain link and armed policemen while families and young people chant the "hey, hey, ho, ho, Problematic Hero has got to go!" song.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 1:23 PM on October 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

I would celebrate and mourn and explore the Columbian Exchange. It would be a perfect reason every year to talk about important and difficult subjects. People everywhere (not just in the US) could explore the great exchange of everything good and bad. Simple stories about potatoes and tomatoes and horses and cats, more complicated stories about invasive species and diseases, and then stories about genocide and slavery. A good reason for kids to get pen pals (or Skype pals or what ever it is they do these days) between hemispheres north and south and east and west. Maybe tribes driven off their lands could return to origins to remind usurpers (or their inheritors) where they got what they live on? I'm not sure about any of that, but I do think every statue of Columbus could be recontextualized in place to show him and his boys in context. You don't need to tear him down or leave him up so much as to take him down a few notches, maybe slice and dice him, and surround him with new statuary, plaques, etc.
posted by pracowity at 1:44 PM on October 9, 2017

I had the chance to visit San Salvador for some research early this year. It's small and kind of impoverished, with development around the coastline and a wild interior. I don't recall seeing any memorials to Columbus there.* His presence, if any, was muted, which I was glad to see. Columbus killed off the island's original Lucayan inhabitants, after which the island was basically uninhabited until the Revolutionary War period, when the British came to set up plantations and bring slaves. Most of the current inhabitants of the island are descendants of those slaves.

*What they DID have at the watering hole next to the airport was an old picture of Hulk Hogan visiting the island. The lady at the register talked to me about her granddaughter who had won the school spelling bee, and about education on the island, and how she doesn't like Trump.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 2:15 PM on October 9, 2017

In high school, I failed to pass a pre-screening for my school’s gifted program because I couldn’t bring myself to answer that Christopher Columbus had “discovered America,” so yes, please, and thank you for continuing the work of correcting the historical record. I don’t think it’s even possible to make permanent, lasting progress toward universal justice and human dignity without proceeding from a clear-eyed and accurate record of human history. Leave the “poetic truths” and charming just-so stories and myths to the poets, please. We need to be as brutally honest and unsentimental about history as history has been brutal or we’ll never make any lasting progress toward overcoming the worst of it.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:24 PM on October 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

My granny always reminded me of these two things:
1. a holiday is not a real one unless there is no mail and you get the day off from work
2. you can always tell if a war is a real war, declared or otherwise, in your country if they make the G.I. Bill available
posted by Postroad at 3:20 PM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Thanks for this post. I was always confused why Columbus was celebrated by Americans - he was not the first European in North America and didn't even touch what we now call the US. Leif's contribution has been known for a century, confirmed in 1960, so the collective ignoring of facts really bugs me.
posted by saucysault at 3:21 PM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've always enjoyed The Oatmeal's take, and their suggested replacement.
posted by lazaruslong at 3:25 PM on October 9, 2017 [8 favorites]

If we want to celebrate the accomplishments of Italians, how about celebrating Galileo's birthday on February 15?
posted by Anne Neville at 3:25 PM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

While reading about Charlottesville, I ran across a something that made my stomach twist into knots: Nazi-Americans believe that Native Americans should have fought harder (warning: Richard Spencer tweet) to retain their dominance of the continent. The legacy of Manifest destiny. Columbus Day is just icing on the cake of the history American genocide. I agree with saulgoodman about being brutally honest about this history. We must also do our best to imagine and create a nation that doesn't have white supremacy baked into its bones. What does that mean for Americans? Indigenous days? Working to undo the damage of forced assimilation programs? Honoring treaties and returning stolen land? Let tribal sovereignty become full sovereignty? Native American interests over corporate agricultural and fossil fuel interests? Ah. Might be going too far with that last one.
posted by Mister Cheese at 3:57 PM on October 9, 2017

Italian-Americans benefit from white supremacy; what is there to celebrate about that?

Well the argument seems to be that it was meaningful to Italian immigrants at a time when they didn't, quite. But then of course the problem is that it ends up looking like nothing more than a celebration of their eventual admission to that club...
posted by atoxyl at 4:20 PM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Previously marginalized peoples are not allowed to express pride in their identity once they are no longer as marginalized?
posted by Apocryphon at 4:26 PM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Pretending that Columbus is the only Italian of note is almost as insulting to Italians as it is to his victims.
posted by tobascodagama at 4:52 PM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Precisely, which is why I suggested an alternative Italian explorer earlier. (And there is no shortage of navigators from that era- Cabot, Verrazano, etc.) But my second statements is a response to "Italian-Americans benefit from white supremacy; what is there to celebrate about that?" which seems to question that Italian-Americans should celebrate at all. Maybe the statement was meant to be less harsh than it sounds.
posted by Apocryphon at 5:00 PM on October 9, 2017

Expressing pride in identity if you're not marginalized is one thing, celebrating a cruel and genocidal man like Columbus in the name of cultural identity is very much another thing.
posted by Aleyn at 5:52 PM on October 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

Here was Santa Fe's celebration of Indigenous People's Day on the Plaza. Perhaps now we can get rid of the obelisk monument to all those killed by savages.
posted by jabo at 9:53 PM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Fighting against invaders who have better military technology than you is challenging. Especially if a lot of your people are dying of a disease you've never seen before, a disease that doesn't seem to be killing nearly as many of the invaders. The English and the French couldn't really fight the Hundred Years War while the plague was going on, and smallpox in the New World was worse than the plague in Europe.

Plagues don't always spare rulers. The unexpected death of a ruler can be destabilizing in any society. That happened to the Incas before the Spanish invasion.

People don't always unite against an invasion. Some of them figure they can use these invaders with superior military technology to settle some scores with local enemies. That can be especially attractive if the invaders are offering to give or sell you some of that military technology. This kind of thing happened with the Tlaxcala in Mexico and with various tribes in North America.
posted by Anne Neville at 4:38 AM on October 10, 2017 [4 favorites]

"I couldn’t bring myself to answer that Christopher Columbus had “discovered America,”"

Thank you!! It's depressing to think that many people do not consider a continent officially populated and "discovered" unless there are white people living there.

You see this not just with territory, but with food, music, anything. Like, people have been eating avocado on toast for centuries upon centuries, but all of a sudden it's a white hipster thing nobody thought of before. It's avocado on bread people, we would have to be dumb as rocks not to eat them together.

And similar to territory gentrification, avocado, quinoa, and any "ethnic food" that gets "discovered" by white people suddenly gets prohibitively expensive and us brown people get fucked. Shit, even potatoes got appropriated and a ton of people think they're Irish. They're south American.
posted by Tarumba at 7:40 AM on October 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

Imagine that you are the leader of the Tlaxcala. Your neighbors like to fight you, capture your warriors, and sacrifice them. They may believe that the world will end if they don't do this. You don't have the resources or military power to make them stop. Now there are some newcomers in your area, newcomers who seem to dislike your enemies and have new military technology. Is it obvious to you that you should put aside your differences with the neighbors, the ones who like to capture your people for human sacrifices, and fight against the invasion? Or do you think that, whatever these invaders are like, how much worse can they be?
posted by Anne Neville at 7:48 AM on October 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

I just heard an ad on the radio for a local grocery store...it was for their "Italian Day" sale! Ground chuck is on sale so you can make Italian meatballs!

And you know what? Fine by me.
posted by elsietheeel at 3:44 PM on October 10, 2017