General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Goodbye, Columbus: Seattle Commission wants name stricken from holiday [View all]earthside
(6,960 posts)This anti-Columbus Day dust-up is the kind of 'political correctness' that does real damage to the over all liberal and progressive agenda ... it causes a backlash against other important causes.
Ninety percent of Americans in both continents know what Columbus Day/Día de la Raza is all about: commemorating the arrival of Europeans in the New World ... not much more or less than that.
The focus on the person of Columbus as the monster misses the bigger point, anyway ... a point that most of the anti-Columbus proponents don't like -- the imperialism of the Roman Catholic Church via the governments of Spain and Portugal which legitimized most of the genocidal slaughter that followed.
But lots of the descendants of Spanish, Portuguese and aboriginal Americans are now at least nominally Roman Catholics, making it complicated to be attacking their cultural history. So, the boogeyman of Christopher Columbus as the embodiment of evil makes the case more politically palatable.
Besides, the arrival of Europeans to the North and South American continents would have happened around the time of Columbus's arrival just because of the advance of European technology. The diseases they brought would have come no matter what, for instance. I just find it odd how some folks want to create an alternative history that would have been full of rainbows and lemon drops and use that to make judgements about actual history.
October 12, 1492, and the expedition of Columbus changed the world, for better and worse; it still a day of tremendous significance in human history thus far worth remembering and commemorating.