Christopher Columbus...Racist Plunderer

Yesterday was Columbus Day.  It's a Federal holiday.  No mail service.  Lots of people had the day off.  Of course, as in so many things in today's world, there has to be controversy.  I've actually heard about this in past years but had largely forgotten about it, as I do every year until it comes around again.  There was also an article in the local fish wrap about a CC statue being hit with graffiti and splashed with fake blood that needed to be cleaned up.  

The controversy is all about how Columbus was a racist plunderer who only brought disease and other vestiges of the horrible Europeans to the pristine and perfect indigenous people of the new world.  I guess if he had never sailed West from Europe and discovered North America, it would still be a perfect paradise inhabited by a simple but loving people today.  But any rudimentary study of the natives who inhabited the area would indicate that they were a bloodthirsty, warlike people who by today's standards were appallingly violent, misogynistic, and ignorant.  

But I really don't understand why it's a zero sum game.  Why can't we celebrate a guy who got in a little rickety boat and sailed off over the horizon not knowing what was there and at the same time honor the heritage of the people who were here in the beginning.  I saw that a friend posted an article over on FB about all the cities and states who have opted out of Columbus Day and have changed the name to Indigenous People's Day.  You can read it here.  This article seems to me just another example of our woke and politically correct culture.  

I'm sure that old Chris wasn't the most benevolent guy.  He was probably a superior European upper-class guy who believed in manifest destiny.  I'm sure him and so many after him didn't exactly treat the native people very well.  In fact there were probably atrocities.  But it did take some big ones to jump in that boat and sail away.  And we should acknowledge the treatment of native people and do everything in our power to ensure it's not happening again and will never happen.

But I'm just not a fan of erasing history.  Because if we erase it, we have a depressing tendency to repeat it.  So for me I'd rather they keep both and tell a truthful story.  I know that is probably naive, but anything else is just dishonest.