Interrogating history

Audacity, nerve, dauntless, important, borderline brilliant, visionary, ahead of his time, remarkable, gifted … these are words the Columbus Day editorial used in discussing Christopher Columbus. Those things may all be true about Columbus. The problem I have is that the editorial asks us to put aside the “blaming” and “scolding” of those who object to celebrating events from which ensued colonization, enslavement, murder and disease, and simply acknowledge Christopher Columbus as an important person because “his voyages forever transformed the world, and bridged the hemispheres.”

As a man of his time, the editorial argues, he was innocent, having had no way of knowing what would ensue from his “discoveries.” The editorial speaks of his multiple voyages, with only the stars to guide him, surviving all kinds of hardship including storms, shipwrecks and cannibals. This way of talking about Columbus is familiar and has endured over decades. I recall it from elementary school. Except for the editorial’s references to the Columbus Day controversy, it might have come directly from my 1950s grade-school textbook.

I don’t remember questioning that telling as child, but I did eventually develop critical thinking skills and learned the importance of interrogating recorded history. I learned that the record amplifies some voices, events and facts, and muffles, glosses over, or omits others depending on who is doing the recording and for what purposes. Perhaps I would read Columbus differently today if over the decades of my education I had been exposed to multiple and divergent perspectives on European exploration of the Americas. At the point that I realized there was much missing from the history I learned in school, I became skeptical of the record, eager to dig for missing narratives, and mistrustfully curious about those who perpetuate the old, one-sided view from my elementary-school days.

ROANNE ELLIOTT

Fayetteville