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Daily Dose: Columbus: hero or has been?
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Yesterday was a Columbus Day. Perhaps you noticed an empty mailbox, or a foiled trip to the bank, but otherwise your day was like any other Monday. Some Americans had a more passionate response, staging protests around the country including one that closed nine DMV offices in California. It wasn't firebombs from a nearby protest that closed down the dreaded DMV, but rather a protest by state workers over the loss of their paid holiday.
Other protests, such as one staged by the Native American Student Union in Oregon, were not about greed, or were they? Native Americans, who lived on the continent for thousands of years before Columbus’ voyage, see the holiday not as the beginning of the new world, but the end of their own world. The Europeans that followed Christopher Columbus across the pond spread war and disease among the Native Americans, and ill treatment of our forebears has followed our country's history for over 500 years.
What, if anything, should Columbus mean to our country? A day off? A budget cutting measure? No mail to sift through? Or perhaps a recognition that our ancestors were not the shining heroes we portend them to be? Today, remember the words of Ted Chiang, from The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate.
Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.
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