The general argument made by Silvio Laccetti and the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board in their work, Pro/Con: Should we Celebrate Christopher Columbus , is whether or not we should continue to celebrate Columbus Day. Silvio Laccetti claims that we should still celebrate Columbus Day. He writes, “He was also a great explorer, an intrepid adventurer, a man of fervent faith and a defiant leader who blazed a path to the modern world” (para 9). In this passage, Laccetti is suggesting that Columbus was a brave explorer who overcame adversity and started the Age of Exploration. The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board claims that we need to recognize the suffering of indigenous, American people.…
Did you know Columbus Day is a lie? If you don’t know who Columbus is, he was a man who was claimed to discover America. Many think that Columbus found the New World looking for new undiscovered land but he was in fact trying to find gold and an all-water route to Asia as well as Queen Isabella’s mission for spreading Christianity to Asia. Columbus Day shouldn’t be celebrated because he was not actually the person to discover the Americas and Columbus thought he landed in Asia. First, Columbus Day shouldn’t be celebrated because Columbus thought he landed in India and didn’t think he discovered new territory.…
In elementary school, we are taught--from textbooks like those written by Joy Hakim--that the courageous Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in search of new land and riches then by pure coincidence happened upon America, a new and exotic land of which he befriended and tamed the wild, stupid, and unsophisticated natives. Much like many of the other things we are taught in elementary school, this is far from the truth. Not only did Columbus massacre these native people and eradicate any trace of their culture for no more than either the pursuit of riches or simply the fun of it, but these people were not stupid or unsophisticated--far from it, in fact. Some may even argue that Native Americans were more sophisticated than the Europeans that “discovered” their homes.…
Christopher Columbus, apparently America's founder. Well I think differently. And here is why. First of all, when Columbus got to America, there was already people, Indians, here. They had their own “villages”.…
In school, children are taught about the great adventurer Christopher Columbus and how he discovered the New World. People learned to lionize him as the hero who discovered the country of America, but what’s never mentioned is that Christopher Columbus is not what Americans are lead to believe. The facts that are missing from history books is that he was a slave owner, a murderer, cruel, and greedy. If he possessed all of these terrible traits, then why is there a day dedicated to him? No good person would celebrate Hitler, so why should Christopher Columbus be celebrated?…
However, what these people fail to realise is that he may have had an impact on where people sailed in the fifteen hundreds, he was about 500 years late to being the first sailor to come across it, not even taking into consideration the “some 145 million people” who already inhabited the hemisphere in 1492 (Document B). Columbus's influence on future sea voyages may have been great, but it merely led more explorers to conquer lands of Natives and then enslaving them, showing that any impact he had was certainly not positive. Another argument which some use to support the continuation of Columbus Day is that “it is necessary to pay a price for progress,” and that just like “Hiroshima and Vietnam,” we must do anything for the preservation and expansion of Western society and ideology (Document H). This argument is misguided as the slaughter of thousands of innocent Natives through slavery and barbaric ruling cannot be compared to dropping a bomb which will end a war, that would have kill millions of soldiers. It also does not compared to a war launched in order to protect the freedom of other people from the oppression communism.…
Have you ever met someone that looked nice but once you got to know them they was totally different? Sometimes people shouldn’t trust one source. The textbook only shows one side of the whole story. Columbus is not who you think he is, I think Columbus day should be changed. We should still celebrate but something has to change about.…
Celebrating Columbus Day: Should We? The issue of whether the United States should continue to celebrate Columbus Day or not has been a topic of interest for quite some time. To some people Columbus Day is a ridiculous day on which we glorify genocide of the Arawak Indians while to others it is considered a day of great importance and a celebration of an honorable man in history. Columbus Day is actually the latter description, but to prove this an agreeable definition is needed. What exactly is an “honorable man”?…
Columbus Day is an unnecessary holiday that, for some reason, we still honor today. The holiday is also an affront to the indigenous population. The false sense of patriotism is wrong to memorialize. The whole day is based off of a fabrication of the true events. When children are in elementary school, they are taught that Christopher Columbus was a hero, to shield the truth.…
We shouldn't celebrate Columbus Day. Not just because he was a bad person. Yes, it is because spread so much disease, and I really don’t want to be celebrating someone who committed near genocide. But mainly, I don’t want to have a day where the Native Americans in our country feel hurt and betrayed as we celebrate the man who killed so many of their ancestors. The majority of people in America aren't Native American.…
The Colombus Day Controversy In the town of Svalbard, we have come across a problem, and that problem is Columbus Day. The idea of keeping or deserting Columbus Day has been debated from time to time. I have used the facts and made my decision of what I believe is best for this town. Columbus has been viewed as both a good and a bad man.…
Columbus Day is a well known holiday because it was considered the discovery of the Americas and the exploration of new world, It also help develop the world the way the today. Under all of that joy and happiness is a cruel reality of pain and suffering under the Spanish. America should not memorialize Columbus Day because he did not discover the Americas, and his legacy was all about death and destruction for the people that were there already. Columbus did not accomplish anything he only found land that was discovered already. In source 1 Michael S. Berliner states that columbus did not discover America because people lived there for thousands of years.…
Although Columbus Day is a national holiday honoring a famous historic figure, many people take it as an opportunity to hang out with friends, finish homework, or even catch up on sleep. Columbus was known for many brutal attacks and events in history such as multiple rapes, enslaved people, and deaths. It is also well-thought that Columbus was the first one to discover the Americas , where many people don't know that the native Americans where the first to arrive in America. Instead of rewarding Columbus for all of these brutal and terrifying actions, we should abolish Columbus Day because of all of Columbus's lies and mislead ideas. When Columbus came to the Americas, in addition to bringing multiple slaves, he also disrupted their lifestyles.…
For example, from a certain point of view, the benefits of Columbus might overshadow the negatives. However, that point of view constitutes a holiday that frequently ignores the negatives, devaluing Native American societies. Another dispute is that without abolishing Columbus Day completely, there is no way to utterly eliminate the Eurocentric ideal of his voyages that is celebrated annually. However, rather than wholly eliminate one side, the holiday should celebrate the connection of the Old and New Worlds. Preservation of the holiday allows for the appreciation of both European and Native American cultures before and after…
Thesis: Christopher Columbus was a man responsible for the decimation of three major civilizations, as well as the ultimate genocide of the indigenous peoples as a whole, one of the largest in human history. Columbus alone committed an array of horrific acts, using the Indians as sex slaves and extorting them for labor, stealing their land and goods, and hunting them for sport and dog food. His choices and treatment influenced how other would later view and deal with the Indians, eventually leading to their near extinction. Most of us know very little about the people who roamed our lands before we “discovered them”, and instead praise one man’s inaccurate claims. and that is why we should replace Columbus Day, which credits a man for deeds…