Fuck Columbus

Good morning. Here's your yearly reminder that Christopher Columbus was a monster and Columbus Day is a shameful stain on our country. Some talking points: 

1) By 1492, virtually no one except idiots thought the world was flat, kind of like today. Columbus proved literally nothing. 

2) Columbus didn't discover a damn thing. First of all, you can't "discover" a place where people have already been freaking living, but if you're coming from a colonizer mindset, he still didn't discover anything. Europeans had been to North America a number of times already. Besides, Columbus didn't set foot in what is now the United States; dude smashed his ship into the Bahamas. 

3) Columbus was one of the founding fathers of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Kidnapping human beings from their home, shipping them like cattle across the ocean, and selling them to Spanish assholes is, I hope we can agree, not awesome.

4) Columbus was a sociopath. In addition to enslaving human beings, he also committed a litany of other violent atrocities, including: rape of women and children, murder by beheading, public dismemberment, child sex trafficking, feeding human beings to his dogs, and other things that would make Jeffrey Dahmer sick. And he didn't just do this to indigenous people; he also abused the Spanish settlers who came to Hispaniola, who he starved and beat regularly. His atrocities were so severe that in 1500 Columbus was taken back to Spain in chains to be punished. 

5) No one gave 1/3 of 1/2 of a shit about Columbus until the mid-19th century when Washington Irving wrote a book about him, and for some reason we decided to use this (largely fictional) book to teach history instead of the thousands of available primary sources describing what actually happened. We've only been celebrating this shit as a nation since the 1930's, largely because a Catholic organization is good at lobbying. 

While this may seem like a small matter, Columbus Day is an offensive indicator of just how little regard we as a nation have for the indigenous people of this country. Despite being the original inhabitants of our vast nation, only about .9% of our population is comprised of native people. Relegated to reservations, indigenous Americans struggle to thrive, having the largest poverty and unemployment rates of any group in the United States. 25% live in poverty. Only 30% have health insurance. Substance abuse, particularly alcohol addiction, is an epidemic. 4 in 5 Indigenous women have experience violence in their lifetime. 

None of this happens in a bubble. What started with Columbus continued through Andrew Jackson and continues to this day with Standing Rock and the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. Lauding Columbus as if he was a hero is a slap in the face to every Native American and every decent human being in this country. In short: fuck Columbus. 

Please, if you live in a state where this holiday is celebrated, write your local officials to demand that today is celebrated as Indigenous People's Day. Write your national leaders to encourage them to make a nationwide change. 

While you're at it, please consider a donation today to an organization that helps Native Americans: 

American Indian College Fund: https://collegefund.org/ourwork/

American Association on Indian Affairs: https://www.indian-affairs.org/

Native American Rights Fund: https://www.narf.org/