Columbus: Hero or Villain
The sweet old lady who didn’t know she was a racist.
Let me tell you a story. It was about 25 years ago right around the time of the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary (500 year anniversary). I was teaching in an inner city school, it was my first year and I was trying to get along with my new colleagues. One of my favorite new people was the librarian or media specialist as they are called now. She helped me find resources for my students, had great access to movies and research projects and I was probably the number one teacher to bring my students to the media center that year. One day as I was walking past the display windows she was putting a gigantic “Welcome Columbus” sign in the window.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/10/us/chr...
I realized right away that she probably had a similar education to mine. She had been taught to celebrate Columbus, that Columbus was a wonderful hero who brought the two halves of the world together and proved the world was round. (Which he didn’t by the way. Everyone, especially sailors already knew that. Ask me why sometime…) She also probably got Columbus Day off when she was little like they did in my hometown. But I also was acutely aware as a history teacher that not all students had her perspective especially in an inner-city school.
Did you know of the decades long movement to rename Columbus Day “Indigenous People’s” day? More than 25% of states in the United States no longer celebrate Columbus Day!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/....
But 25 years ago, this was not the case and I knew I had to be careful. So I casually walked up to her and in the friendliest voice I could muster I said to her “you know not everybody might feel comfortable welcoming Columbus especially in this school.”
Her reaction was icy. How dare I say that! She had taken so much time and effort to make these beautiful banners and colorful pictures of Columbus being welcomed by the “Indians”. She was not about to let some young upstart history teacher tell her how to create holiday displays. She was shocked and hurt and angry!
I knew I was on thin ice as a new teacher and I did not want to make enemies my very first year so I found an awkward way to excuse myself and moved on. However the historian in me and more importantly the human in me could not let this sit. So I went on and produced some of the research on Columbus and how the international slave trade grew from his exploits. There was a recent article from Newsweek about the diseases the Europeans were unwittingly carrying which wiped out 90% of the native population. (Sidenote: Think about that for a minute in the middle of this corona pandemic. 90% of the population of the Americas, 10-15 million people, were wiped out in the 16th century!)
Now of course Columbus himself did not start the international slave trade and of course he was ignorant of the disease he himself was carrying but also of course no African or Native American would celebrate the beginning of these two genocidal events. In my class we have often debated Columbus and whether he himself deserves the label of hero or villain in order to try to put these incredible events into some kind of perspective. By the way the results of the debate go back and forth, sometimes he’s a hero, sometimes he’s a villain, and most of the time he’s somewhere in the middle.
Fortunately the story has a happy ending. To her credit the media specialist looked at the information I had gathered and realized that perhaps she had misjudged how her banner would be received. That’s all it took. One brief moment of looking at history through someone else’s eyes made her stop and realize that there is more than one way to tell the story. And that is why I tell you this story. Not because the media specialist was wrong, not because there is only one way to tell the story of history but because we all need to take a step back and look at the story that has been told and why it has been told only one way for hundreds of years. Then, we should discuss it.
Thanks for listening,
Alan N. Kay
Let me tell you a story. It was about 25 years ago right around the time of the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary (500 year anniversary). I was teaching in an inner city school, it was my first year and I was trying to get along with my new colleagues. One of my favorite new people was the librarian or media specialist as they are called now. She helped me find resources for my students, had great access to movies and research projects and I was probably the number one teacher to bring my students to the media center that year. One day as I was walking past the display windows she was putting a gigantic “Welcome Columbus” sign in the window.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/10/us/chr...
I realized right away that she probably had a similar education to mine. She had been taught to celebrate Columbus, that Columbus was a wonderful hero who brought the two halves of the world together and proved the world was round. (Which he didn’t by the way. Everyone, especially sailors already knew that. Ask me why sometime…) She also probably got Columbus Day off when she was little like they did in my hometown. But I also was acutely aware as a history teacher that not all students had her perspective especially in an inner-city school.
Did you know of the decades long movement to rename Columbus Day “Indigenous People’s” day? More than 25% of states in the United States no longer celebrate Columbus Day!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/....
But 25 years ago, this was not the case and I knew I had to be careful. So I casually walked up to her and in the friendliest voice I could muster I said to her “you know not everybody might feel comfortable welcoming Columbus especially in this school.”
Her reaction was icy. How dare I say that! She had taken so much time and effort to make these beautiful banners and colorful pictures of Columbus being welcomed by the “Indians”. She was not about to let some young upstart history teacher tell her how to create holiday displays. She was shocked and hurt and angry!
I knew I was on thin ice as a new teacher and I did not want to make enemies my very first year so I found an awkward way to excuse myself and moved on. However the historian in me and more importantly the human in me could not let this sit. So I went on and produced some of the research on Columbus and how the international slave trade grew from his exploits. There was a recent article from Newsweek about the diseases the Europeans were unwittingly carrying which wiped out 90% of the native population. (Sidenote: Think about that for a minute in the middle of this corona pandemic. 90% of the population of the Americas, 10-15 million people, were wiped out in the 16th century!)
Now of course Columbus himself did not start the international slave trade and of course he was ignorant of the disease he himself was carrying but also of course no African or Native American would celebrate the beginning of these two genocidal events. In my class we have often debated Columbus and whether he himself deserves the label of hero or villain in order to try to put these incredible events into some kind of perspective. By the way the results of the debate go back and forth, sometimes he’s a hero, sometimes he’s a villain, and most of the time he’s somewhere in the middle.
Fortunately the story has a happy ending. To her credit the media specialist looked at the information I had gathered and realized that perhaps she had misjudged how her banner would be received. That’s all it took. One brief moment of looking at history through someone else’s eyes made her stop and realize that there is more than one way to tell the story. And that is why I tell you this story. Not because the media specialist was wrong, not because there is only one way to tell the story of history but because we all need to take a step back and look at the story that has been told and why it has been told only one way for hundreds of years. Then, we should discuss it.
Thanks for listening,
Alan N. Kay
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