Should Columbus Day Be Celebrated

Improved Essays
While you make many potentiate statements about why Columbus Day should be celebrated, I do not agree with you. What comes into question is your support for Native Americans. Is your interest truly invested in their welfare? Or is this just a tokenism that you are using as grounds to support the Celebration of columbus day? You reiterate you support for America’s indigenous population, however you then continue to play into the eurocentric belief that europeans discovered america. In truth, the first humans to discover America were the nomads who crossed over the then existing Bering Strait land, not Columbus or any other european. You claim that columbus day is celebrated by Italian americans for heritage reasons, and while that was true

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    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.…

    • 263 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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.…

    • 555 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    They had been living here for a while when he got here. So how could “he” have “discovered” America and everything in it? That is something I have been wondering for years now, but I guess that is a question that will never get answered… By anyone. There is also another MAJOR reason that Columbus day should not exist.…

    • 284 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Columbus Day should not be a federal holiday. For one, Christopher Columbus was responsible for the enslavement of many Native Americans. According to “Columbus Day? True Legacy: Cruelty and Slavery” by Eric Kasum, when settled in the Bahamas, Columbus subjugated the native Lucayans, Tainos, and Arawaks.…

    • 960 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Columbus Day Dbq

    • 865 Words
    • 4 Pages

    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.…

    • 865 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    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.…

    • 122 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    It's that time of year again; pumpkin spice lattes, Halloween decorations, and the national recognition of a man responsible for mass murder, pillaging, and enslavement. It's no secret that Christopher Columbus was a horrible man, or that he didn't even "discover the new world", yet every year on October 12, he is recognized for his "accomplishment". It seems as though more and more people are unwilling to celebrate Columbus, even going so far as to put an axe in the head of his statue. While there has been opposition of Columbus Day for many years, there is only a handful of cities that refuse to recognize it.…

    • 212 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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”?…

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    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.…

    • 166 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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.…

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I do not believe either, but believe he was more bad than he was good, and for that reason this holiday should be discontinued. Although Columbus Day is one of the oldest holidays, it is also disrespectful to the natives who shared their home, America, with us. Columbus is constantly honored for “discovering” America, when in fact all he did was sail to America, just to become welcomed by the millions of indigenous people living there. When we honor him for discovering America, shouldn’t we be honoring the people who took us in and helped our people?…

    • 552 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    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.…

    • 241 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Columbus Day, we get a day off of school to rejoice, but is it actually worth to celebrate? Columbus Day is celebrated across the country in almost all of the states. Some enjoy the holiday, some don’t. Columbus Day shouldn’t be celebrated in America. Columbus Day isn’t worth to celebrate considering the terrible events the Natives had to live through.…

    • 379 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The holiday of Columbus Day has kindled an irrefutable amount of controversy in recent years. One side of this bilateral argument asserts that Columbus opened up a global trade network while the other declares that his travels led to the decimation and abuse of the Native American population. One argues that Columbus Day should exist, while the other calls for its removal. However, this argument, along with the current Columbus Day, is overly simplified. To extract the true meaning of Columbus Day, Columbus himself must be withdrawn from the center of the holiday, and the holiday should recognize both the positive and negative results of October 12th, 1492.…

    • 832 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    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…

    • 1500 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays