Dear Editor:

In recent years there has been some controversy over whether or whether not Christopher Columbus should have his own holiday. As a young kid, most of the information I learned concerning Christopher Columbus stated that Columbus was a brave explorer who discovered the New World. I was always led to believe that he had earned praise and was a hero. Now, I’m starting to question if Columbus really does deserve his own day.

The first reason as to why I disagree with how we honor Columbus is regarding his original intentions while exploring. His original goal was to find an all water route to East Asia, but he never did this. He discovered America by accident. This means he did not have the generous intentions some people think he had when setting out on his voyage.

In addition to not achieving his main goal, he also took credit for things he didn’t earn. For example, as soon as he landed on the Island of Hispaniola, he claimed the land for Spain. This was wrong because this land was already inhabited by thousands of indigenous peoples. This seems like a selfish thing to do and shows his true motives, which were to get a much land and money as possible, no matter the lives it cost. Indeed, many lives were taken in the following years of Columbus’s invasion. As a result of Columbus’s journey, millions of Native Americans perished. This was mostly due to the variety of diseases brought over by the Europeans -which the indigenous people were not immune to. Furthermore, much of the native population were killed as a result of being forced into slavery. This means if we celebrate Columbus, we are a celebrating a man who held a major role in the start of slavery in America.

Lastly, we shouldn’t celebrate Columbus day because if you look at the situation from a Native American’s perspective, it becomes easy to imagine that on Columbus Day much of the Native American community has painful memories, like the violent conversions of their ancestors, which come to the surface, all whilst they watch the rest of the country celebrate the origin of these memories. But, I do accept that many people do still honor and celebrate Columbus and his holiday. The people who do this may argue that the new world was bound to be discovered eventually by a European, and that it just happened to be him. Also, they say it is unfair to blame him for all the problems that happened after his journey to the new world. I would have to agree with the first part of this claim that this “new world” was bound to be discovered by a European eventually, but I disagree with the other part of the claim. Because it did happen to be Christopher Columbus who first discovered this part of the world for Europe, he had a large responsibility, and I disagree with the way that he handled it. In my opinion, he should’ve taken into consideration the original inhabitants of the Americas instead of just claiming their land. Hopefully, this would’ve resulted in some compromise, therefore allowing us to coexist and find unity.

Overall, I have come to the solution of still celebrating the discovery of the new world by Europe, but not specifically honoring Christopher Columbus. This way, as Americans, we show that we respect and acknowledge our past mistakes, but we also appreciate the discovery and advancement to the “new world”.

Sincerely,

Jamilah Fofana, junior