Columbus Day?

When I was a kid, Columbus Day was big, really big. There were parades and everything. We learned all about Christopher Columbus who had discovered America. We had plays celebrating him, we read stories, we recited speeches.

Then as I got older, I realized we had been fed a bunch of revisionist malarkey. Christopher Columbus didn't discover America! America discovered him. Columbus was a bumbling idiot. After all he was looking for a new route to India. Instead he found a place that was new to him and Europeans. Although some think Lief Erickson had already been here. But even so, there were people here already. Discovery? Nope.

So, why do we still celebrate Columbus day? Aren't we giving homage to a man who instigated genocide? Who plundered all that he saw. Well because that's what we do in America. The same way we force little Black kids to go to schools named for men who held their ancestors as Slaves. How many Thomas Jefferson and George Washington schools are there in America, thousands I would guess.

And by the way, this is not meant to be a slight against Italian Americans. Christopher Columbus was a bum, but that does not reflect on Italian Americans as a whole, just him.

Hopefully as time goes on we will use Columbus Day to teach kids about the true history of America. Not fairy tales. We will celebrate the fact that despite Columbus, those people he discovered are still here. We should use Christopher Columbus day as a chance to learn about the culture and people who were here before anybody else arrived.

No one and I mean no one in America is more invisible than Native Americans. And that is an astounding thing. Native Americans ought to be revered. After all they survived a genocide. Millions upon millions were slaughtered and otherwise abused by the new expanding populace of Europeans.

So from now on, let's think of Native Americans and celebrate them, on Christopher Columbus Day. That would be a good start to recognizing real American history.