Christopher Columbus: Should We Make Stupid People Famous?

In my opinion, we should stop making stupid people famous. Today, it is very easy for anyone to be remembered for a very long time, for doing virtually nothing. Worst case scenario, we can even make someone famous for doing something stupid, like eating a tampon or disrespecting their mother. Yes, shocking I know but these two things have actually happened. Now imagine what it would be like if these two figures had statues erected in their name after they died. Imagine if their name was plastered across a city. How ashamed would we be that this is the society we have become? That this is the society we have left to memorialize. But in the same way, we sometimes memorialize the wrong people. We memorialize the “discoverers” of our world, when …show more content…
For example, we see the memorialization of Christopher Columbus.(photo). While some may consider this simply an homage to the man who discovered our country, for others it is much different. To the white community, the negative impacts of Christopher Columbus are not that great. However when we consider the impacts on the Native American community, the perception of Columbus becomes much darker. Columbus and his men were essentially responsible for one of the most horrifying genocides America has ever seen. The Native people were torn from their homes and families and killed in cold blood. And for what? I find myself asking why often. The answer is for land. The systematic killing of these people was motivated solely by the greed of European conquistadors. So perhaps, based on these impacts, this is not the person we should be memorializing. Perhaps we should be memorializing great Native chiefs or warriors, rather than perpetuating this story that conquistadors did nothing wrong. By doing nothing, we take the side of the oppressor, and that is a reality we cannot …show more content…
In memorializing someone or a group, it is important to consider that having good intentions does not necessarily mean their impacts will be good as well. In the end, we have to consider the feelings of all those affected and how they will react. For example, during World War II, our world underwent one of the most terrifying mass genocides to date. During this time, many people, especially Jews, in Europe were captured, tortured, and sometimes killed for their race or their religion. Despite this terrifying event, the great states of America did little to help. Understandably, the Jewish people did not appreciate the fact that there was a discussion of memorial museum of the Holocaust Museum in America.(Musser). The motivations of Americans were misplaced, and the impacts of this museum would have been the continued anger and frustration of an entire culture. This piece of history is a large part of European culture, and trying to appropriate it to America is simply not right or moral. For this reason, the Holocaust Museum was relocated to Amsterdam in order to keep the history as close to home as possible, and in order to keep the impacts on the positive side of the