Why is it woke to tell the truth about Christopher Columbus?

[RolandCuthbert]

1. He did not discover the world was round. I don't know who started this dumb rumor. But I was taught this nonsense in kindergarten. Most folks in his age, knew the world was round. We have known the world was round since Ancient Greece, when Eratosthenes calculated the curvature of the earth by looking at lengths of shadows at different times of the day.

2. He was a poor navigator. He had no idea of where he was when he landed in the West Indes. He thought he was on the other side of the globe.

3. He didn't discover America. He didn't set one single foot on the continents of North/South America. In fact, he didn't discover anything. Folks were already living where he landed, the Taino Indians.

4. Easily he is one of the most brutal genocidal people in history. All of his exploits are detailed by his own words and by the accounts of Bartolomé de Las Casas. Las Casas detailed his own eyewitness accounts of Columbus and his men. They brutally enslaved the Taino Indians. They raped women and children. They would literally cut off the arms and limbs of Taino Indians to test the sharpness of their swords. An account from Las Casas. . .

“They [Spanish explorers] forced their way into native settlements, slaughtering everyone they found there, including small children, old men, pregnant women, and even women who had just given birth. They hacked them to pieces, slicing open their bellies with their swords as though they were so many sheep herded into a pen. They even laid wagers on whether they could slice a man in two at a stroke, or cut an individual’s head from his body, or disembowel him with a single blow of their axes. They grabbed suckling infants by the feet and, ripping them from their mothers’ breasts, dashed them headlong against the rocks. Others, laughing and joking all the while, threw them over their shoulders, shouting, ‘Wriggle, you little perisher.’

I get that some folks like the guy or consider him a hero. But there ought to be room enough in this country for us to understand the truth about him. It ain't a political decision. If you read Las Casas account and read Columbus own diary entries you are repulsed. If you don't want to read that history or remember him that way, that's on you. I ain't trying to convince you.

His own words;

“They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things... They willingly traded everything they owned... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

AceVane probably has the most accurate account of this dude online.

[WhiteSteve]

I just look at all of this shit as infantile mentality. I don’t claim to be the smartest man in the world, there’s no degree from Oxford on my wall or anything. But I feel like a lot of people stop learning after the years of school where used Elmer’s glue and construction paper, and fuckin’ safety scissors. Columbus, the Pilgrims, any president featured on our currency…. infallible, unassailable heroes, because my first grade teacher told me so. Some history teacher in 11th grade tries to tell you otherwise, sorry, it was too many words and not enough pictures, so it goes unlearned. Or it’s just part of the whole “U-S-A!!! We’re #1!!!” routine that the lowest common denominator like to be a part of so they can feel like winners in some arena of their likely otherwise pedestrian lives. Some of these people probably consider Columbus “a great American”, for fuck sake lmfao. I don’t know, man, I look at all this stuff from a psychological perspective now. People’s psyches want to and need to cling to certain things in order to feel…. I don’t know…. to feel a variety of emotions, I suppose. But the moral of the story is our own egos will betray us just to support internal feelings of superiority or to assuage internal feelings of inadequacy, fear, disappointment, etc, etc. No matter what’s wrong in their lives, they can always cling to this idea that they’re Americans, and the (incorrect) assertion that America and Americans are unparalleled in anything and everything we do. And of course that doesn’t leave room to explore the harsh truths of how a lot of things were accomplished or carried out back in the day, so their psyches shut it down immediately and they attack the opposition to any of it, usually blindly and in an uninformed manner, but they do it nonetheless.

[RolandCuthbert]

That's probably an accurate assessment @WhiteSteve. We want to have this past that is an unassailable example of truth or righteousness, when we know that past was never that for everyone. In fact, it wasn't even that way for most "White" people. It has always been a form of indoctrination, that these past figures did the right thing or at least did the right thing for their era. And these figures set a foundation that we should be building upon rather than building away from.

I don't know if it is because many people have such fragile egos and they are dependent upon this fiction or what. But we need to talk about that and really start analyzing this from a psychological perspective. Because when it comes to debate there is no understandable logic or rationale.

[Sirenboobzilla]

Columbus was portrayed to be a 'hero' and great explorer in the 1800's. Otherwise his deeds were just looked over. When Italian immigrants were coming to America, his story received a push so that public opinion would lean in their favor. Ever since, it's been widely taught that Columbus was great.

But, he was indeed incompetent. He didn't discover anything that wasn't already inhabited. He nearly caused the extinction of the Taino people.

I believe the reason some people say it's 'woke' (I swear after GAG I've grown a disdain for the word now) is just because of cancel culture running rampant. To them, it's entangled in the same web as trying to cancel Friends for being homophobic

[monorprise]

If your going judge a man you should do it by the standards of his time or not at all.

I think people find it 'woke' to tell the 'negative' by modern standards aspects of history in regard to certain people but completely ignore the similarly negative by modern standards context of the world of the time. Instead just letting people pretend like the cherry picked part

Columbus for his achievement and by the standards of this day Columbus was a world changing 'hero' he is THE man who discovered for most all of the 'old world' the path to and existences of the eastern hemisphere. That other people had come before him matters not for they failed to return and report that knowledge or around the world.

[Sirenboobzilla]

By European standards, yes he did do something grand. However Europeans weren't the only ones in this story. The mass genocide of Taino Indians is hard to ignore. Some 85% of them were wiped out whether by the sword or by diseases brought in to them. Columbus needed to show that the new world was profitable, but there was no gold in the Caribbean, so he brought Tainos over as slaves. It's not woke to see him as incompetent

[RolandCuthbert]

@monorprise So you can't acknowledge what that change was for the Taino. And that it mean their extinction.

Again, maybe they didn't find that all that enjoyable. And maybe it isn't "woke" to acknowledge that.

[AmandaYVR]

(I tried to reply to yours, @WhiteSteve, but my reply is too long so I'll have to do it as a standalone comment instead...)

That was great, Steve. 👏 I agree with everything you said, and the reason I read you sometimes it because you say it well. You do tend to make them quite long (pot calling the kettle) but they flow and are easy to read (except more paragraph returns pls), but I particularly like the colour. It's also a bit like expressing or venting a rant that I didn't have to put any effort into, lol. Like coughing up a furball but the eyes aren't watering.

To you and Roland... I think another aspect to this topic - in a more general sense, not in particular about Columbus - is that we need things, and people, to believe in. Without heroes and the like, life can feel at times meaningless and futile. I think this is one large - though certainly not by any means the only - aspect to why we hold onto icons.

Roland, I went to see Top Gun, and I liked the latter half, but not the first half so much, and not as much as many of y'all. As we left the theatre, my husband and I chatted about why that might be. He said American males are hungry for that American Exceptionalism (I phrase I find quite distasteful and off-putting.) For me, the themes, though good, did not go deep enough, they stayed basic and surface, in my opinion (I'm quite demanding when it comes to fim and storytelling), but I recognize how good it must feel, for American men, to feel they are not being cast out, put out the pasture, and still seen to have value. But I digress, that is another topic. Just wanted to mention that. It's semi-related.

I fully admit, I tend to have many strong opinions. Sometimes in retrospect I feel a bit of regret about that, and believe me, I know how difficult it might have been for some other person to be on the receiving end of that in the moment. But I can also say with full sincerity that I do change my opinions when new information and evidence is brought to light (light that I sometimes go researching for.) For instance, I watched a very good British (BBC) documentary by an excellent PhD historian which told important details of Lincoln and his whole freeing of the slaves. (Long story short, he wanted land, power, govt and the country to run his way. 'Freeing' the slaves was just a PR campaign to aid in his real quest. He used the slaves as fighters in his war.) It has forever changed the way I look at Lincoln.

MLK is another. A trumpeter of justice, hope, perseverance and freedom - all fantastic. But he was also an imperfect man, a womanizer, etc. etc. He later remarked that he was actually too idealistic, naive, and wrong about many things.

And then there is the whole thing of tearing down idols. In another documentary I learned that America is the nation, worldwide, most known for creating idols (often false or undeserving - how the hell did the Kardashians and Kanye rise to 'power'), then watching them fail/falter, then tearing them down, then watching/demanding they repent, then buoying them back up again. It's one of America's favourite pastimes.

What I'm sure we all three agree on is that no human will ever be perfect or even all-good. We're really so despicable as a species. But of course there are levels to all that; and it is understandable, given the complexity of our existence and minds and interconnectedness and ever-growing population density. It seems not only were the history books written by the victors, and bogus narratives were told, omitting out all the less than flattering bits (by the way, America was actually named by an Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer who set forth the then revolutionary concept that the lands that Christopher Columbus sailed to in 1492 were part of a separate continent, interesting fact), but the more we come to know about people - anyone, everyone - the more dirt will be uncovered. And it is what we decide to do with that, that speaks of the society we are today, or at the point of this knowing and discovery. If we trash, and tear down the monuments and statues, will we have anything left? Which ones are 'Eh, close enough'?

We have one in my city. People came in the middle of the night and pulled it down in protest. Our oldest neighbourhood, Gastown, is named after Gassy Jack (yep, he farted a lot; it was back in the gold mining days and he drank a lot of beer/was drunk a bunch.) He raped young Native Indians girls, treated their people very badly, so there's shit to pay now. Our president is paying out reparations for all sorts of things, trying to make amends. (The deeds were evil, no doubt, but one has to ask, s there a bottom to that well, and should citizen taxpayers of today pay for the sins of those who lived hundreds of years ago?)

I don't know what the larger answers are to any of this. And I for one always want information, truth, and fact. I just don't know what we should do with the info. Maybe it's not that we don't have anyone to revere, but that it's been the wrong people. ?

[RolandCuthbert]

@AmandaYVR Amanda, you touch on a lot of different things in your post. But I would like to keep things simpler and ask a question.

Why does anyone's hero. . . have to be universally liked? There are hundreds of statues dedicated to Colombus. People will be remembering and honoring him long after I am dead.

But why do I have honor him? And why does anyone else have to honor my hero, James Baldwin?

You talk about this thing called interconnectedness. Well I surely acknowledge that all human beings are interconnected. And I am open to any good faith genuine attempt at understanding that interconnectedness. But how do you find that common ground with folks who do not accept that?

That conversation is far beyond the pettiness of me not liking Columbus or the petty responses to my take. It is a far reaching conversation involving understanding different worldviews, cultures and historical perspectives. But we live in a society that has already pretended in various ways and at various times we all subscribe to some universal "White" American view. And when that view is rejected by certain others, there is a response of unintelligible, irrational rage.

Just look at this "take".

There isn't a way to do this conversation proper justice without creating a separating take and talking about that in detail. While ignoring the insane racist trolls dedicated to derailing that discussion.

[AmandaYVR]

Yes, good questions, indeed. Difficult questions.

I'll be honest, I just read your take and WhiteSteve's comment, that's it. And now that you say that, I am no more interested in reading down. Not only are Americans clutching the

I would not like to be a city official who decides on what statues to commission and erect, and which to tear down. I don't even like most of the art, aesthetically, and I wouldn't have approved most I see (and what it represents is a whole other complex and sometimes provocative symbol.)
I'm not particularly interested in these human hero markers - of a place saying, "This is who represents who we are." Maybe "This is where we came from, who we were" is something. But the choices of representation... seem so fraught/loaded. But it's patriotism, right. Pride is quite useful in power. It just doesn't personally interest me. I wonder if your question about honouring is rhetorical, because of course you can honour anyone you like, but this is really about who is in power in governments, and who do they choose to herald. And, yes, there is a lot of injustice and selective memory in that.

I know some would just call this interconnectedness bleeding heart b. s. I think it comes not only with a certain nature/temperament, but with age and wisdom. Eventually you learn how to connect the dots, and you see the interplay, cause-and-effect, and such. It's the antithesis of a bird's eye view, right. It takes in a broad scope, and understands. It's frustrating af to see such blatant denials of this, so often. I think at the root of it all is just plain selfishness. If it doesn't benefit someone, to see from another's shoes, they just won't acknowledge it. It's the whole 'resources are scarce' mentality.

[AmandaYVR]

How can we find common ground with folks who do not accept? Well, as much as I often feel and think otherwise, we cannot simply demonize, be tribal, or call out stupid. Even Forrest Gump knew, "Stupid is as stupid does," but that's too high-brow for the prickly-backed. So you have to listen, acknowledge, blah blah blah. I do many things in conversation, and writing, if I am choosing to try to bridge the gap. I find it very obvious, the importance/benefit of things like this; also, focus on the similarities, don't fixate on just the differences, and throw in an "I agree with you on..." that helps a lot. Actually address what they said. Don't ignore it and just reiterate your point over and over.

The problem with some people, is even if they do see your effort, and restraint, some still won't do the same things in return, won't give you one fucking ounce of credit or note any agreement. They carry on, with their shit behaviour, not even remotely similarly respectful. Still, two wrongs don't make a right. You see this so often (even in dating/relationship talk)... the justifications... "[he/she] hurt me, treated me like shit, so now I'm goona'..." I feel like saying, is this the intelligence level of our society/citizens today? An eye for an eye, you done me dirty, so-. Come on. Everyone's been hurt, disrespected, stepped on, you name it. Point is, society doesn't function, the tapestry unweaves, if all we do is pass the pain on, retribution style; sometimes it's not even focused on the one who [might] deserve it. They just inflict it onto every other new person who comes along.

[AmandaYVR]

I try not to fill my head with garbage. I listen, read, think, pay attention. Sometimes I do wonder if it's just me, thinking the world has gone to shit, that people don't listen to each other anymore, and see all the distraction and addictions to meaningless shit; but then I listen to what some great minds/thinkers have to say, and they're saying similar things to what I am feeling. It's pretty ugly out there. I could make a bullet point list of suggestions of what to say-not say, how to try to bridge that ever-widening crevasse between different ideologies, genders, race, blah blah blah. But I wrote some of that stuff early on here, and got a bunch of shit thrown back at me, so I'm over it. You can't just try to inspire a cooperative attitude. The people who need to hear it just yell at you. They're too far gone, I guess. So what I am left with is this - choose wisely who to try to build a bridge with. Some are a waste of time and energy. (As you say, "While ignoring the insane racist trolls dedicated to derailing that discussion.") But many can still recognize that olive branch being stretched out toward them; and it is those that we must seek, recognize, and keep trying to engage with.

[RolandCuthbert]

But I would think that decision would be an easy one. If you were elected as a city official, you and your constituents would probably be of a like mind. Correct? Like Liz Cheney won her seat with over 70% of the vote in Wyoming. She lost this year by over 40% because she disagreed with her constituents.

As for who has the power, the power lies in the education system. It lies in the history we choose to remember and honor. Not every state or community is the same. Nor does it have to be.

My view is a bit different than your own. The denial of interconnectedness for me isn’t about selfishness. It is about control. You can do great evils and wrongs. . . without ever seeing yourself as the bad guy. It is a form of objectification. Removing your connectedness to other human beings, so you can see them as creatures unlike yourself. Then your actions can be just results of some objective logical reason or method you have employed. . . rather than the truth about subjective biases.

[RolandCuthbert]

But all of that stuff is obvious, right? I lead a cultural discussion group. I have folks in it from Ukraine, Russia, Germany, Togo, Indonesia, Mexico, Indigenous folks, and others from all over the United States. But these folks come to my group voluntarily. They challenge each other, they challenge me, and we talk about this interconnectedness. The conversations have been angry, empathetic, and eye-opening.

And you don’t seem to address is that there is a view that engaging in that discussion is a political exercise. It is a certain worldview in and of itself. It has been called “Marxist” or leftist” or libtard. Just this act of coming together to understand one another, even if you disagree with the person you are meeting with.

[RolandCuthbert]

But I am going to bring this back to the original point. That somehow, people are going to have to find a way to find peace with another person’s personal choices. I am sure I do not care if folks find James Baldwin engaging. I have friends and other folks with whom I can celebrate his life with. But this weirdness about creating and enforcing some universal standards on everyone has always failed and always will. You can only work with folks, where they are. You have to find some empathy or compassion to understand why they think the way they do. And not pretend you can force them to think differently.

[AmandaYVR]

No. In government there are many individuals and distinct opinions, and they do not always fall along party lines. There is a lot of pressure to conform to the group. And if one dissents, they may be met with severe pushback from fellow constituents, and influence and temptations from lobbyists. They conform to the majority to get elected, and then they must play with their fellow politicians, or risk being ostracized.

I don't know anything about the education system, but I presume textbooks are not unique to each state. There must be carryover, for cost-sake.

I think the "creatures" thing is outdated now. We've moved past that into more subtle ideological justifications. And limited resource theory.

[AmandaYVR]

"And you don’t seem to address is that there is a view that engaging in that discussion is a political exercise" ? Of course I see value in that. You're the one who started the discussion about all the people who attempt to derail discussion.

This is not about "personal choices." It's about much more important things, such as who we revere, and how we will govern with such disparate views (realities.)

[RolandCuthbert]

I am not sure where this intersects with political party. I said like-minded folks. And I don’t know of too many situations where constituents elect someone who is against their worldview. I have seen folks cross lines and reach compromise, but that is a totally different situation. Again, I run a group and our mission is diversity. But I don’t know of any example of cooperation built on intentionally misunderstanding each other.

Of course they are unique to the state. There aren’t many federal standards for education. In fact, it is highly likely they could be ruled unconstitutional. The federal government can set guidance. But it cannot compel states to meet those requirements. It can merely reward certain states for meeting guidelines with funds, resources, etc.

I don’t feel we have moved on at all. The argument has just evolved to better fit the times.

[RolandCuthbert]

How is that not "personal choice"? I have no idea about who you revere, or who you don't. And it doesn't bother me that I don't know. And I am pretty certain if you were to reveal that information, I still wouldn't care.

But some others might. And I don't understand that. Because there is no such thing as governing something of that sort. Like my state just passed a law to mandate teaching Asian-American History. I can hardly see every state in the Union even coming close to doing something like that.

That is their right.

[USLegionary]

You don't have to be woke but history should not be viewed left or right with political agendas but told honestly.

Fact is Christopher Columbus took a massive of leap of faith taking a few sailing Carracks west across the Atlantic ocean to find a route to the east. It may have been a case that he or others knew there was land there, I know columbus on occasion sailed to Greenland which is part of North America and Iceland and the Icelanders would have been able to tell him of the vikings who sailed and settled in North America for a time. East Africans had tales of sailing to a land in the west and around this time the spainish and Portuguese were in contact with them. The Portuguese were already seeking to reach India and China either around the horn of Africa and possibly west. They interned columbus on his return. I believe people knew the earth was round since ancient Egyptian times and maybe civilisations that predate the ending of the ice age.

Slavery and servitude was a normal practice in medieval times. Invading and taking the countries of other peoples was normal for that period. I mean look at Shaka Zulu he quickly built an empire through conquest taking his neighbor's lands and enslaving his enemies. If you look at central asia, it's a region where people have been displaced time and time again, as a matter of fact the spainish orginially come from there when their ancestors were displaced by the huns. This is just the history of the world. As for the native of peoples of the Americas the writing was on the walk the day the first European turned up and sneezed, 90% of them were killed by the old world diseases that were brought. Part of the whole Manifest destiny mythology stems from King James the 1st describing new England as a land set aside for British colonists by God because when they got there the place was empty of native peoples with some abandoned villages on places, but what really happened was French and Spainish explorers had been there 6 years before and had spread smallpox, bubonic plague, chickenpox, cholera, the common cold, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, measles, scarlet fever, sexually transmitted diseases, typhoid, typhus, tuberculosis etc. I mean anyone of those would be hard for any population but imagine all those things hitting at the old time and they had no natural immunity.

[RolandCuthbert]

1. Actually, I think your post doesn't address the basic facts. If slavery and genocide of entire groups of people was so common place why was Columbus stripped of his titles and imprisoned for what he did. Why did the chieftains in Hispanola revolt against Spanish rule. Why did the missionaries and others at the time write about the appalling conditions of the Indigenous?

2. I was never tricked into believing Shaka Zulu was some great hero. In fact, I had no idea about who he was until I was years removed from college. And not when I was young and impressionable. Everything I learned about African kings, culture, etc came through my own research and study. The fake meaning behind Columbus Day was taught to me when I was in kindergarten. Not many folks who take issue with take. . . address that fact.

3. And I am not understanding introducing the issue of disease. Nothing excuses the accounts of rape, beheadings, cruelty and worse that occurred under Columbus' rule.

[USLegionary]

1. Remember the Spainis in the same period of columbus had expelled the Muslims from Spain, forced them to convert. There was a huge African slave trade going on from the far stretches of Africa to Arabia. The Mongols massacred and enslaved whole peoples. The byzantine had a huge slav slave trade. The copts in egypt are now a minority in their own homeland where they can trace their lineage back to the pharaohs. Millions of Hindus and seiks were wiped out when various Muslim groups invaded India. Then there's all that went on on China and Japan. Slave revolts sometimes happen, look ag the 3 servile wars ever hear of Spartans. Serfs of Europe often revolted, rarely successful, maybe the first serf revolt to succeed was the Switz. Columbus was stripped of his titles not because of his harsh rule and treatment of the natives but more due to political maneuvering and his mismanagement, remember these were the people doing the spainish inquisition.
2. I've no issue with the take. I just think history is what was and should be learned from but not politicicised.
3. No one is excusing anything. Is anyone trying to excuse human sacrifice of the aztecs?

[RolandCuthbert]

1. The expulsion of Muslims happened almost a century after Columbus was dead and buried. And exactly how does that explain your point? Columbus was stripped of his titles because of the treatment of the natives. So maybe even back then, it was considered to be a bad thing. Also, bafflingly you make a comparison to Africans who are in a different part of the world, who are not related neither culturally or genetically to the Taino. Then lastly, none of this explains why this information was not taught in schools. Why was the mythology about Columbus taught and not the truth? People can decide for themselves what they think about him. They don't have to be given some "alternative facts" to convince them one way or the other.

2. That's the thing. It is like you don't realize when they lied about Columbus they made this political. History should just be history, right? And it is naive to pretend that when alternate facts are given, there is no political goal in mind.

3. Again, you know about. . . how? I learned about the Aztec's brutal policies in high school. I was told of human sacrifice and how the person's heart had to still be beating. But no one told me that Columbus' men raped and murdered at will. No one told me his men would inflict cruelty for enjoyment. But you pretend there is some equivalence here. Which means either you didn't read the take or you just can't respond to what has been posted.

[USLegionary]

Columbus sailed west in 1492. In 1492 Granda in Spain was finally taken from the moors and they either left or were forcibly converted to Christianity. Columbus wasn't stripped of his positions because of his treatment of the natives, that might have been the pretext for it but not the reason. I make a comparison to Africans and other people because you said that the treatment of the natives was not common in that period but ot was very common. A good question, why did WASPs on America glorify an Italian Catholic who sailed under the flag of one of America's enemies Spain?

2. History is often written in regards to controlling the political narrative, a good example of this was JFK facing the Soviets down during the Cuban missile crisis when really the Soviets won that.
Yeah the incas and aztecs did all that that to their neighbors and more. There is some equivalence here just another group of conquerors in history.

[RolandCuthbert]

I am not going to argue about why he was sacked. Adm. Don Francisco de Bobadilla investigated him for numerous claims which included cruelty towards the natives. So let's move onto my next point. Why did he have so many detractors who decried the treatment of the natives? You appear to make the claim that people did this because they did not know it was a bad thing to do. Oh when I said "commonplace" I meant why didn't the Spanish do this to each other? Obviously, it was wrong in Spanish society. It is just that they didn't consider the Taino Indians to more than savages. Right?

2. None of this explains why you claim to teach the truth is being political and the fairy tales about Columbus were not. And again, no one taught that Columbus and the Spanish were cruel. You knew about the Aztecs right? You wouldn't claim that knowledge is "woke" would you? To you. . . it was just facts. . right?

[USLegionary]

Again. The persecution of the natives continued so it wasn't the real reason columbus lost his postion. Why weren't thd spainish doing it to their own people? They were, ever hear of the spainish inquisition? The Basques were conquered by the spainish around this period. Muslim, jews, Romani.

[RolandCuthbert]

Again, you are not responding to what was posted.

We are not forced to remember the Taino Indians as heroes. We barely remember them at all. I didn not know anything about them or their culture until I left college. And they have been wiped from the pages of history. We don't celebrate any other governors who subsuquently carried out more brutality. All this other stuff about crimes and suffering is neither here nor there. None of these groups have holidays or statues.

But we remember Columbus and the exposing the truth about him is considered to be "woke" and political. And not the lies that were told about him.

"In 1828, Irving published The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Irving was already popular as a fiction writer when he wrote his treatise on the intrepid explorer. The book title may give you the appearance of a biography, but the work was mostly fiction. Irving used fanciful anecdotes to romanticize Columbus’s initial journey in 1492. Irving recounts a tale in which one member of the commission raised objections to the journey. The member supposedly used Christian scripture to object to the round-Earth theory, suggesting that Christians of the era widely believed that the Earth was flat."

You pose a number examples at the end. It just seems like you are throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks. Or course I have heard about the Spanish inquisition. I know a bit about the Basque, we only covered them a bit in high school. But none of these things compare to the extinction of the Taino.

I mean, this is an odd debate. Are you really claiming the Spanish killed off the Taino because they didn't know any better?

I am just saying the idea is absurd.

[Sargentcaptain]

On the 1, yeah kindergarten teachers are idiots.

2 is true, but has no bearing on him discovering America.

3 is 'fun'. He did land on the American soil. Even if you wanna bullshit about the Caribbean islands, he did land on American mainland too, check up his 3rd voyage into Venezuela and discovering rivers. People already living there doesn't negate the fact that he discovered places that he, nor anyone in the old world, knew existed. Would you be here without him? If we land on some planet X and discover intelligent aliens there, it doesn't negate the fact that we discovered the planet.

4. Who is saying he's a hero? The quote of his says literally nothing. He states facts and says 'we could', not 'we are', not 'we should', not 'we will'. None of the other things say anything about him doing anything. I've researched this back a few years ago and I found a lot of contradictory statements an odd phrasing as to him being both for or against slavery and other terrible things. There was some stuff about him being ok with slavery so long as the slaves were cannibals or other types of pieces of shit. I also found that he was arrested for mistreating colonists who themselves were mistreating natives.

[RolandCuthbert]

1. Well, I just want to make this clear. I didn't learn that folks already knew the world was round until college.

2. Uhm, the dude was heralded as some great navigator. When he was an idiot. He should have been able to reasonably calculate the earth was much bigger than he previously thought. The mathematics were already established centuries ago.

3. I just don't count Central America as North or South America. And I don't know any historian that does. He never set foot on either continent. And when I get rebuttals about his brutality, I am always told how brutal North American tribes were. He never encountered any of the folks we call American Indians.

4. Heroes usually have Holidays named after them. So I am not sure why you would respond in that way. I don't know about you, but I don't enslave folks when I meet them. Its is just the way I roll. I am not certain why that isn't problematic for you. But again I am not trying to convince you. I am just wondering why you would think other folks would find that acceptable.

Uhm sir, you only have to read the accounts of Las Casas who testified to King Ferdinand about what he witnessed. He wrote it all down and you can buy the book.

[Sargentcaptain]

2. Who thought that?
3. I just did a quick search, first result, first sentence:

"On his third voyage, Christopher Columbus became the first European to reach the mainland of South America, when he landed in what is now Venezuela on August 1st, 1498."

www.adamsmith.org/.../columbus-reached-venezuela

On the rebuttal about brutality, natives of central and south America also don't have the best of reputation. Columbus was aware of the natives being cannibals and had to flee from them.

4. I think it's possible to celebrate people's achievements without hailing them as heroes. Besides, I think the origin of the wider celebrations are a result of the 1800s New Orleans killings of Italians.

> I don't know about you, but I don't enslave folks when I meet them. Its is just the way I roll. I am not certain why that isn't problematic for you.

I never said it wasn't, I said that I haven't seen any real evidence of Columbus being in favor of general slavery. And as far as punitive slavery goes, I'm against it, but it's just a part of the times and really nothing extraordinary, terrible reality.

I think I've read some of that book back in high school and if I remember correctly that book talks about Columbus retaliating against Spanish colonists because the Spanish wanted to enslave locals and Columbus actually defended the locals so the Spanish rebelled and eventually went to the king in who had Columbus arrested.

[RolandCuthbert]

2. I don't understand. You have never seen or heard anyone claim Columbus as a hero. Even as there are several in this thread and we have had several takes at GaG on him in the past?

http://www.truthaboutcolumbus.com/

Do you at least know we had a holiday named after him? It is usually in October the 2nd Monday. You never heard of it?

3. You got me. I double-checked. I thought he only made it to the Pearl Islands and that was all. Point conceded.

4. Uhm, we don't have many holidays named after people. That is a prestigious honor. I think pretending that a holiday doesn't honor the person for whom it is named borders on being disingenuous. That's why the Holiday is controversial and many folks celebrate it as Indigenous people's day.

Well, the fact that the Taino indians were enslaved doesn't really support the conclusion that Columbus did not support slavery. The personal accounts of his men who boasted that Columbus gifted them Taino women doesn't support that conclusion. The fact that Columbus loaded his ship with about 500 Taino Indians, 200 of which died on the voyage and the rest were sold into slavery upon arrival in Spain, doesn't seem to support your conclusion either.

It is funny that you take the account of Columbus arriving in Venezuela as fact, but doubt the other accounts of his exploits. Can I ask why you believe certain things to be fact and others to be suspicious?
.
www.washingtonpost.com/.../

Columbus and his crew searched and searched for gold to no avail, so they filled their ships with something else they could sell: people. Of the 500 Taíno they took — selected because they were the strongest and healthiest specimens — 200 died on the voyage to Spain. Many more died once they had been sold into slavery.

[Sargentcaptain]

2. The vast majority of people here think he was a genocidal maniac, rest are saying 'it was in the context of his time', not even trying to research and deny the claims. There are several people here saying Columbus is hailed a hero and none actually hailing him a hero. If that link was meant to be proof people think he was a hero, read the first sentence.

4. It's fine if you wanna complain about the name of the holiday, but the point of the holiday has little to do with Columbus and more to do with Italians being beaten to death.

> Well, the fact that the Taino indians were enslaved doesn't really support the conclusion that Columbus did not support slavery.

Is there any evidence this had something to do with Columbus? Was it granted by him, supported by him?

[Sargentcaptain]

> The personal accounts of his men who boasted that Columbus gifted them Taino women doesn't support that conclusion.

I've never seen any evidence of that apart from modern books with dubious sources.

> The fact that Columbus loaded his ship with about 500 Taino Indians, 200 of which died on the voyage and the rest were sold into slavery upon arrival in Spain, doesn't seem to support your conclusion either.

I'm not just sure if the slaves were just random people or the cannibals.

> Can I ask why you believe certain things to be fact and others to be suspicious?

Because, and I read that article, it doesn't give documents from that time but a book from centuries after the fact and I wasn't able to find what that book was based on. A People's History of the United States is the book listed in the article, it's from 1980s. As sources, that book lists other books from 1970s, 1950s and 1940s, yet not a single thing from the actual time period. When I check the period sources they don't seem to specify if the acts were really supported by Columbus or if he was forced to go trough with it as they came from his king.

Things like landing points, in context of Columbus having no clue where he was, can be verified and cross referenced today and timely documents aren't much use since the people then didn't even know where they were. Inversely, things like policies and events can't necessarily be verified today without remains or documents from the time period.

[RolandCuthbert]

So Las Casas is a dubious source?

"I'm not just sure if the slaves were just random people or the cannibals."

That statement isn't making rational sense. Who are the cannibals?

Bartolomé de las Casas witnessed these atrocities and wrote them down in a journal. Are you disputing that he actually lived? He was born in 1484, died in 1566 and immigrated to the modern day Dominican Republic with his father?

Do you dispute his account that he owned slaves and land gifted to him by the Spaniards under the command of Columbus? You dispute he wrote all of this down in his journals and published them in 1552. Of course he had forwarded all this information to the monarchy years earlier when arguing on behalf of the Indians. The journals are what the books are based upon.

As for the direction connection to Columbus, he was the Admiral of Ocean Sea and Governor of the Indes. How you have come to the conclusion that he cannot be held responsible for the actions of the men under his command is beyond me. Every atrocity committed under his governorship was his responsibility to prosecute and correct.

He was eventually sacked, put in prison and stripped of his governorship.

You will probably argue he was exonerated. He was never restored as governor. Because he proved he could not govern.

[RolandCuthbert]

2. That argument is disingenuous. Most reasonable people accept their heroes are not perfect. I assume I am much older than you. And I had no idea about these accounts until I was 30 years old. But that came from doing my own research. My education in grade school consisted of cartoons and fairy tale depictions. And nothing in my high school or college experiences corrected that view.

When I was in kindergarten, I was taught this song. Columbus was a hero and we were told his discovery of America was one of the greatest events in human history. I want to repeat, "Human" history. Why would you deny that people believe this?

Anyway, we have the movie "Conquest of Paradise" that portrays him as a hero. It invents a make-believe villain who is the "real" persecutor of the Indians. Columbus is their "defender". And then he is sacked , blamed and misunderstood. Which is totally inaccurate. But this was the narrative. Along with dozens of cartoons and other media for children that depicted him as some great explorer and hero.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoLZ5E9xtIY

I can't find the movie my school showed. I think it was done by Rankin and Bass. But it was similar to the cartoon movie made in 1992.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB-zOrz1EpE

4. It has to do with Italians beaten to death? Really? So this is how you were educated? You were told that Christopher

5. So I don't understand. You mean that Columbus brought back Taino Indians against his own will? Now there may be a dispute over the number of Taino Indians he took back to Spain. But there are easily several accounts stating he took Indians back to Spain.

[Sargentcaptain]

> Who are the cannibals?

Possibly, slaves.

> Bartolomé de las Casas witnessed these atrocities and wrote them down in a journal.

Would that be the same de las Casas who wrote that Columbus's 4th voyage was about him protecting and aiding locals, who wrote about Columbus writing a letter to the king condemning slavery?

> Do you dispute his account that he owned slaves and land gifted to him by the Spaniards under the command of Columbus?

Yeah, cause I wasn't able to find any evidence of that. I was able to find that las Casas first came to the new world once Columbus was already stripped of his power as ruler.

> How you have come to the conclusion that he cannot be held responsible for the actions of the men under his command is beyond me.

Last time I checked governors don't have supreme authority, kings do. As in the king who's funding and setting demands for the voyages.

> He was eventually sacked, put in prison and stripped of his governorship.

Yeah, and apparently the reason for that is because he was brutal to colonists who wanted to rape and enslave locals.

> 2. That argument is disingenuous.

Not sure exactly where I was being 'disingenuous'.

> Columbus was a hero and we were told his discovery of America was one of the greatest events in human history. I want to repeat, "Human" history. Why would you deny that people believe this?

What? Altering the course of history isn't one of the greatest events in human history? As for the hero part, are those your words or theirs?

[Sargentcaptain]

> Anyway, we have the movie "Conquest of Paradise"

Oh, a movie which is oh so popular, right? Besides, who thinks Hollywood action movies are documentaries? And funnily enough, some of what you descried as being 'totally inaccurate' just seems to be true.
The cartoon from 60s, I think it's fair to discard it as it's too old and times have changed. So the smoking gun as to Columbus being hailed as a hero is a cartoon made for children. Such a shame they didn't put rape and genocide in that one.
Anyway, fair enough, I've checked out a YouGov poll and apparently a third of people said they view Columbus as 'more of a hero'. Honestly, I'd argue that that's way too broad of a categorization but I don't care about this that much.

4. This wasn't how the schools spun it, we were just thought about his voyages and celebrated some general Italian cultural stuff in high school. But, yeah, as I've already said, apperntly the holiday really became a thing as a response to some massacre a century ago.

5. Several questions I wasn't able to find answers to:

- exactly who were the slaves, random people or was it punitive
- would Columbus have brought back slave had it not been for the king
- I will say it's a very weird and probably far from a trustworthy source, but I saw some article claiming that the 500 slaves were freed upon arrival to Europe and that the slaves weren't necessarily regular people

www.latimes.com/.../...mez-20181003-htmlstory.html

[RolandCuthbert]

I guess I don’t understand. Are you saying that the slaves would practice cannibalism? You mean like eat each other’s dead bodies or something to that effect. Do you have some historical records I can reference?

Yes, I do believe he is the one. Unless you know of another Las Casas who lived in the modern-day Dominican Republic.

When was Columbus stripped of his titles? Las Casas arrived in Hispanola in 1502 with his father. He talks about being given land and slaves. I would assume even if Columbus wasn’t around, this was the result of his policies.

Of course Columbus had authority. It was just second to the King. Which was why he was sacked.

So the accounts of him gifting slaves and punishing slaves and well. . . just having slaves should be ignored? Francisco de Bobadilla and Michele de Cuneo have accounts as well. And wasn’t Cuneo Columbus’ lifelong friend? He describes the natives as slaves, right?

Of course it is disingenuous. I have a hero. MLK, who cheated on his wife multiple times and quite probably plagiarized his dissertation. But I wanted to know the truth about his life and not listen to some nonsense of about perfection. That is a disingenuous argument.

Well, the Indigenous were “Humans” too. Do you think that quite possibly, it wasn’t such a great event for them?

[RolandCuthbert]

What difference does that make? The movie is a fairytale. And it reflects basically what the common view of Columbus was. The fact that it wasn’t a bomb means little. And that cartoon from the 60s is one I saw when I was young. Along with a Rankin and Bass film at school. Then there is the other cartoon made in 1992, which I am certain later generations viewed.

I think you just have an issue with admitting you lost on this issue. When you proved me wrong about Columbus stepping foot on the South American continent, I conceded the issue. But you have argued this hero label of Columbus for several days. Only to then claim it isn’t important.

That’s disingenuous.

4. Wow. I can’t speak to your education. Because my grade school didn’t even explain that he was Italian. I didn’t learn that until much later. I was told all kinds of nonsense. That he would sit on the dock and could tell the earth was round because the ships would not simply disappear. They would sink lower and lower until they could not be seen because of the curvature of the earth. He was hailed as a genius because no one else could figure this out.

5. Well if you can’t find the answers, try asking historians. You seem unable or unwilling to contact the historians who support these claims. And it is weird, since this is the prevailing view among the expert who studied this era. I am not sure why your expertise is more compelling.

[Sargentcaptain]

There's an infamous quote from Michele de Cuneo about Columbus (admiral) being just fine with sex slavery for a cannibal. The then Spanish laws also only allowed slavery in limited circumstances such as war.

"When I was in the boat, I took a beautiful Cannibal girl and the admiral gave her to me. Having her in my room and she being naked as is their custom, I began to want to amuse myself with her. Since I wanted to have my way with her and she was not willing, she worked me over so badly with her nails that I wished I had never begun."

Columbus would have lost his powers as governor in late 1500, maybe early 1501 from what I found. I wasn't really able to find much on his policies though and I'd rather assume good in people untill shown shown reason not to.

> So the accounts of him gifting slaves and punishing slaves and well. . . just having slaves should be ignored?

Thanks for arguing in good faith. We've been here, done this, if you wanna know why and what kind of info I want about slaves go and read my previous responses.

> Francisco de Bobadilla and Michele de Cuneo have accounts as well. And wasn’t Cuneo Columbus’ lifelong friend? He describes the natives as slaves, right?

I pulled a Uno reverse with de Cuneo, and concerning de Bobadilla the fucker imprisoned Columbus without a trial, shipped him back to Spain and appointed himself governor. Boy, I wonder if there might have been some sort of an incentive for him to get rid of Columbus by any mean necessary.

> Of course it is disingenuous. I have a hero. MLK, who cheated on his wife multiple times and quite probably plagiarized his dissertation. But I wanted to know the truth about his life and not listen to some nonsense of about perfection. That is a disingenuous argument.

So I'm just gonna repeat what I said before:

> 2. That argument is disingenuous.

Not sure exactly where I was being 'disingenuous'.

Yes, discovering 2 continents is one of the greatest feats of mankind.

[Sargentcaptain]

It's an action popcorn movie not a god damn documentary. Gladiator is horrifically inaccurate, I still like some of the movie cause it's well written for what it is. Titanic is an abomination, Braveheart, the Patriot you name it, don't matter cause they aren't made to be historically accurate.

> And that cartoon from the 60s is one I saw when I was young.

Has the world changed since the 60s?

> I think you just have an issue with admitting you lost on this issue.

Google the word projection.

On the hero thing, I said it wasn't that important to me cause I don't care about public opinion, I care about actions of people in question. And I started arguing it in the first place cause I saw that there were more people here saying that Columbus is thought of as a hero than people who actually said that he was a hero. Your arguments on that were so shit I went out of my way to prove myself wrong.

> That’s disingenuous.

lol, you wanna accuse me of that? I was gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and let it go, but fuck it. You told me that Columbus 'was heralded as some great navigator'. My response to that was 'Who thought that?', you came swinging back with 'You have never seen or heard anyone claim Columbus as a hero.' Stop calling other people disingenuous when you can't even stay on the point.

[Sargentcaptain]

5. This is a textbook definition of appeal to authority, also bonus points for appeal to popularity. If 2 people, regardless of their bullshit titles and degrees, are given the same evidence, they should come to the same conclusion. The evidence I found myself previously and the evidence you gave and the evidence from historians I've seen doesn't really answer any of my questions. The kinds of books I've seen modern historians sell make idiotic sweeping statements that apply to Spaniards generally, not to individuals, not to Columbus specifically. I've tried finding some more texts and I'm still not able to answer any of those questions. And I've already described to you the problem with a lot of historians today is that they just source each other and circle jerk till the day they die, never actually giving any real evidence such as documents from the period.

[RolandCuthbert]

There is slight disagreement over exactly when he was sacked. But it is around the same time period.

As for the accounts of slavery, your claim is that he was a defender of slaves. It appears that was the same claim made by the movie, which you say didn’t get much billing in public. Even as there is not a single account of this in anything he wrote. Nor is there any mention of this “heroism” in any eyewitness account of his actions. His friend Cuneo recounts multiple murders and atrocities all under Columbus’ watch.

And strangely enough, you are defending the fictionalized depiction of Columbus over several accounts of brutality under his governorship.

He imprisoned Columbus without a trial? Aren’t you looking backwards in time and imposing your own morality upon what should or should not have happened? Was de Bobadilla imposing some form of justice that Columbus had not more brutally imposed upon the Indigenous and the people who he “ruled”?

Yes, your argument is disingenuous as its core and on its face. It would seem if you have some standard, you would use it for everyone involved and not just your heroes.

[RolandCuthbert]

Yet the movie makes the same claims you do. It is historically inaccurate, but arrives at the conclusion that Columbus is a hero. A misunderstood character who only wanted to do “good”. It was the evil other people who were the problem. Even as, he was the governor of the Indes.

Well, I didn’t go to school until the late 70s. So? But your argument is strange. You seem to be confused by it. I am the one who says we should not teach these fictionalized versions of history. Your job so far has been to defend these fictionalized versions of history. I am not sure where you stepped off that path or changed your mind.

Yes, you don’t care about it, but somehow de Bobadilla did him wrong. He was a “fucker” who imprisoned Columbus without a trial. Because Columbus was busy dispensing equal justice to the Indigenous. . . or something that’s crazy.

So now I am lying? I mean at this point, you aren’t attempting to be rational.

buffalonews.com/.../...5c83-ab65-bb6af8e51579.html

[RolandCuthbert]

I don't really care to answer your questions. I created this mytake in response to other thread here at GaG that claimed talking about Columbus negatively was some notion of "wokeness". I didn't create it to answer your questions. Do your own research and if you turn up some fact, post about them.

But I created this to rebut the wokism claim. A claim so nonsensical I simply could not keep quiet about it.

Do you support Columbus Day being replaced with Indigenous People's Day due to Columbus leading to the colonization of the Western Hemisphere? ↗

Don't you anti-Columbus people know tribes killed and enslaved other tribes? ↗

What do you think of Bloomington, Indiana's decision to rename Good Friday and Columbus Day? ↗

And I didn't note your response on any of these threads. I can't respond because most of these snowflakes have me blocked. They are so certain of their ideals and beliefs, they cannot defend them from me.

So I had to create my own separate mytake. Because I do not believe telling the truth about Columbus insults "White" people, is an example of "wokism" or any such nonsense.

If we are going to teach history in school, we need to teach it all. And to pretend we somehow honored the Indigenous by graphically telling grade school students how they would literally rip the bloody beating hearts out of the chest of prisoners or slaves for ritual sacrifice is not even attempt at a rational conversation.

If it wokism to tell the truth about Columbus, what the fuck kind of label can we put on that?

[Sargentcaptain]

Only thing I saw of Cuneo that referred to Columbus was the cannibal sex slave letter. And frankly, I don't care much about punitive slavery or about the rape of a cannibals. As for heroism, you don't gotta be a saint. Columbus's letter to Luis De Sant Angel about his 1st voyage is interesting. Columbus wrote about him and his men trading with natives. His men were ok with trading worthless items for riches from the natives, Columbus put a stop to that and was apparently more generous. His son wrote about an encounter with some normal natives and cannibals who wanted to enslave the normal native women. Those women were begging Columbus to stay on the ship and save them from the cannibals. On another occasion Columbus left some of his men to protect natives from cannibals in exchange for shelter and gold. His son wrote that the entire reason for why the crown sent an envoy to the new world in order to spy on Columbus was a struggle between Columbus and Alonso de Ojeda. According to (an admittedly very biased source) his son, Columbus was under attack by de Ojeda who came to Columbus' territory capturing slaves and trying to organize a coup. The coup failed, but after all the bloodshed the king wanted to know what was happening so Bobadilla was sent. Soon after Bobadilla arrived, he took everything Columbus had, including his house, titles and powers also sending Columbus back to Spain in chains.
If you wanna argue, and this is assuming Columbus's son is a reliable source, that Columbus was against de Ojeda more so because his ass was on the line than because of de Ojeda's slavery, that's fine. Results are the same.

> And strangely enough, you are defending the fictionalized depiction of Columbus over several accounts of brutality under his governorship.

Aha, sure, moralize and bullshit all you want. In my research, I wasn't able to find who exactly he was brutal to or for what reason so I can't really give you an opinion on that.

[Sargentcaptain]

> He imprisoned Columbus without a trial? Aren’t you looking backwards in time and imposing your own morality upon what should or should not have happened?

This isn't morality, this is legality. I would guess that they'd need a trial prior to imprisonment then too, but I might be wrong on that one. If I'm correct, point is that the due process wasn't followed giving even more credence to the idea that the imprisonment and all was just a power struggle between power hungry nutjobs.

> Yes, your argument is disingenuous as its core and on its face. It would seem if you have some standard, you would use it for everyone involved and not just your heroes.

I am applying the same standard to everyone, where was I not being consistent on that? And for the 3rd time, cause you just won't give the damn answer, where exactly am I being disingenuous?

The point about the 60s is that movies from that time reflected that time and times have changed.

> Your job so far has been to defend these fictionalized versions of history. I am not sure where you stepped off that path or changed your mind.

My point is finding out what is actually true and how much of the 'truth' is just decades of bullshit artist running rampant. The constant assumptions of being bad faith and infantilization is getting kinda old, don't you think?

> Because Columbus was busy dispensing equal justice to the Indigenous. . . or something that’s crazy.

> So now I am lying? I mean at this point, you aren’t attempting to be rational.

lol, lmao
anyway, where did I even say that you were lying?

[Sargentcaptain]

> I don't really care to answer your questions.

Fair enough. My point is just that these are reasonable things to consider especially when dealing with a man's legacy.

I honestly don't understand the 'I didn't see you talk about x here' point. If you want my responses:

> Do you support Columbus Day being replaced with Indigenous People's Day due to Columbus leading to the colonization of the Western Hemisphere?

No, and doubly so if the argument is 'Columbus not bad, but other men Columbus wasn't responsible for bad, so Columbus bad'. Say I found out that everything you claim about Columbus is true and I was the one wrong the entire time, I'd say that Indigenous People's Day should be a thing, but at a different time and I'd like the Columbus day to be reimagined as a general Italian heritage day. In any case, honestly, all of these muh culture/nationality/race/sexuality days are dumb and none should really be a thing. But if one of them exists, the rest should too. This about culture, don't particularly care about that so long as everyone's playing fair.

> Don't you anti-Columbus people know tribes killed and enslaved other tribes?

I'm not anti-Columbus.

> What do you think of Bloomington, Indiana's decision to rename Good Friday and Columbus Day?

Stupid.

[Sargentcaptain]

I don't think grade schoolers should be thought about such brutalities, but more to the point, those are true facts whether you like it or not. People are also thought that medieval Europeans were stupid as shit so this is hardly a cultural or a racial thing. People are also thought about witch trials, points about stupidity and brutality, though commonality is greatly exaggerated. You've said that people thought Columbus proved Earth was round, so another point about medieval stupidity of Europeans that is just false.

> If it wokism to tell the truth about Columbus, what the fuck kind of label can we put on that?

Never said anything about that, and quite frankly I don't care about it for the purposes of these kinds of interactions. My point of contention is that these aren't truths.

[RolandCuthbert]

Yeah, I saw more stuff from Cuneo. He details the Spanish picking out 1600 Taino Indians, and taking 650 of that lot back to Spain. They gave the rest to the settlers as slaves. Then released mostly 400 women with children. The Taino women ran screaming from them, leaving their children to die. When they arrived back in Spain approximately 200 had died. And he said the rest did not live long because they were unaccustomed to being slaves. This was sanctioned by the "Lord Admiral". I am guessing that is Columbus.

As for your information, I see no citation. Mine comes directly from Cuneo.

Why would I believe Columbus son as an unbiased source? He would have written favorably of his father and of his own conduct.

You are not doing research. You are looking for information to validate your own beliefs. How can you not know about the accounts from Cuneo?

And it is you who is moralizing. Somehow the treatment of Columbus was horrible. But the rape and slavery he sanctioned was not.

[RolandCuthbert]

And it reaches the same conclusions you do. So why do you care about it being historically inaccurate? I mean, it has the kind and concerned Columus you have portrayed, right? It is dead on accurate on that point, right? We aren't talking about Rome or the gladiators. I don't remember being fed lies about any Roman emperor.

Yep, the world has changed and still people believe that Columbus proved the world was round.

Yep, you proved yourself wrong. And in order for my arguments to be shit, they would have to be wrong. Again, you can just look at the "take" people cling to lies about Columbus. Because they were taught those lies. They built a perception based upon those lies. And to challenge those lies is to challenge those perceptions.

Oh, so you are arguing syntax. I have to prove that many people think he is a great navigator? When we have several people arguing that here. Hey @Bluemax!!!

When will you drop this nonsensical argument. People believe he was a great man and a great navigator. Why you dispute this is beyond rational thinking at this point.

Maybe you know of an organization called Prager University?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxYVbC283uM

[RolandCuthbert]

Nonsense, this is your argument. I am beginning to question your mental state.

I could give a fuck about what you believe when it comes to Columbus. My point has been from the beginning.

"It is not woke, to believe that Columbus was a bad guy".

Your point has been that somehow I have to convince you. I don't have to do shit other than what I set out to do. And that was to prove that there is more than sufficient evidence out there to refute that he was a genius, that he was kind, that he was a competent governor, that he was a great navigator.

And to pretend that information does not exist is simply not rational, irrespective of your personal feelings.

Cuneo writes;

"But by the time we had reached Spanish waters, approximately 200 of the Indians had died--I believe it was because they were unaccustomed to the air which is colder than theirs--and we cast them into the sea. The first land we sighted was Cape Spartel and very soon after we reached Cadiz, where we unloaded the slaves, half of whom were sick. For your information, they are not men made for work, and they fear greatly the cold and do not live long."

[Sargentcaptain]

In reference to Lord Admiral sanctioning 1600 slaves, I'm think this is the claim that also talks about those particular Indians being cannibals. If this is about the Isabella settlement, I'm pretty sure the entire shitstorm started when Columbus left some of his men on the island while he went off elsewhere. In the meantime, the Spaniards stole from and raped Indians, Indians revolted and murdered nearly all Spaniards and apparently ate some of their remains. If I'm not mistaking, the rest of that Cuneo's letter I think you got this from talks about Indians eating each other.

Aha, yeah, you tell me the name of the guy so I have to guess which one of the hundred letters, books and biographies the claim is from. I tell you who the writer is, who the letter is for and I talk about the subjects of the letter, which voyage it's about also trying to bring quotes when I can find them, but sure, my sources are hard to find.

> Why would I believe Columbus son as an unbiased source? He would have written favorably of his father and of his own conduct.

The thing about his son's writings is that if slavery was popular at the time, lying about his father's opposition to slavery would have been stupid. If slavery wasn't popular at the time the lies would have been pointless since the word would have spread already and his son could have lost reputation and potentially worse consequences. There is no real gain either way so no reason to lie about this.

> You are not doing research. You are looking for information to validate your own beliefs.

Take a look in the mirror.

> And it is you who is moralizing. Somehow the treatment of Columbus was horrible. But the rape and slavery he sanctioned was not.

For the love of fuck, do you understand what arguing in good faith is? Practice it.

[Sargentcaptain]

I've never seen the movie, never will. If the conclusion is the same, the argumentation and reasoning doesn't have to be.

> We aren't talking about Rome or the gladiators. I don't remember being fed lies about any Roman emperor.

? Marcus Aurelius and Commodus are both portrayed grossly inaccurately. The entire 'Imma ban 'em gladiators' thing is bullshit. Commodus is interesting cause he wasn't that psychopathic with his father, yet he was even more unhinged with the gladiators, stories about him actually dressing up cripples as gods just to murder them. And these are only the top of the shit sandwich. Historical Hollywood movies are usually just modern day stories with a nonsensical veil of historical locations inhabited by characters who's only realistic traits are their names.

And it's current year yet people still think the Earth is flat. Regardless, fair enough I didn't make it clear, the 'times have changed' is about Columbus being viewed much less favorably nowadays and child friendly movies from the 60s are hardly representative of modern views.

> Yep, you proved yourself wrong. And in order for my arguments to be shit, they would have to be wrong. Again, you can just look at the "take" people cling to lies about Columbus. Because they were taught those lies. They built a perception based upon those lies. And to challenge those lies is to challenge those perceptions.

I have no idea what any of that was about.

[Sargentcaptain]

As a matter of fact Bluemax kinda has a point. Navigation and geography are different subjects and as far as I know, once Columbus reached a particular destination he was able to sail away and come back to the original point with somewhat impressing accuracy given the time. Nowadays, there are younger captains who only ever look at the GPS and call it a day, back then terrestrial navigation, celestial navigation, dead reckoning were all you had and being precise was very difficult.
And once again, you have a throwaway statement I just don't care about at first, then you prompt me to start thinking and reading about it and turns out, your arguments are shit.

> When will you drop this nonsensical argument. People believe he was a great man and a great navigator. Why you dispute this is beyond rational thinking at this point.

... I didn't bring either of that up, you did...

> I am beginning to question your mental state.

You and me both, buddy, you and me both.

You constantly bullshit that I'm being inconsistent, that I'm calling you a liar, that I'm post hoc rationalizing. You bullshit about my intensions here, about me demanding answers from you. It looks like you wanna make this about me being a liar and hope that I don't catch you bullshitting. Several times you've brought back shit we went trough already, accused me of being the one bringing it up. It looks like you desperately wanna make this about fucking anything other than Columbus's morals cause your arguments on that are terrible and you just hope that all the other filler arguments (like movies, navigation, Columbus day, bringing up other threads and my damn GAG history) are gonna be enough to distract me from your bullshit.

[Anonymous]

I'm just done with it when people try to paint the natives as "peaceful until the evil Columbus and the white man came" because that's historical bullshit and that's where people kick the "woke history" in the ass.

so... your claim is that he was asserting his "white privilege" by torturing and killing people who already spent their lives torturing, raping and killing people from other tribes before he came around? 🤣

People like you, also try to claim that he spread disease-ridden blankets to the natives intentionally to kill them off, while science and history beat that lie all to shit. Since people didn't even know about germs and how they spread until Pasteur in 1870. But that bullshit still makes its way into children's "woke" classrooms to this day. Pardon us for not puting up with it.

That's why it's "woke". Because it's bullshit, and even though you claim to know the truth, you still choose to pedal fucking lies to children about it. The end.

[RolandCuthbert]

My claim is what I posted. Your fantasies, delusions, etc. were not solicited for discussion. We were told the guy was a hero. Obviously, he is not.

No one said the Taino Indians were "peaceful". Only that they didn't deserve genocide. There isn't a single mention of disease or anything of the sort in my post. Historians who studied this era have reached the conclusion that slavery, genocide, starvation, etc. are directly responsible for the disappearance of the Taino.

This is not the result of some political ideology, but of research and fact-finding.

[Msputiton]

History has been white washed for so long, that very obvious truths about so called "white heroic acts and figures" are no longer known by many current people.

It's the main reason America is so divided. Many white people have been lied to their whole lives, that they can't believe the truth when they hear it.

I have a lot of white people who are shocked to learn that for hundreds of years laws were in place to keep black people down.

Many think native Americans were brutal monster randomly attack white people instead of what really happened

Some have no clue black people weren't even allowed to eat in the same restaurants as white people, and a lot don't even know the history behind historical black colleges.

Many have no clue about lynchings and black wallstreet and lake Lanier.

They think once slavery ended, we were just put as equals and treated fairly from the start.

[RolandCuthbert]

Well, I am not trying to teach a class on systemic racism. I just find it interesting that the anti-woke folks try to diffuse any fair discussion about these supposed heroes. And they do it under the guise that everyone has to agree to their conclusions. They come up with some mushy mouth explanation of he was complicated or was good/bad, etc. You can worship the man. You can have a nuanced view. Or you can despise him. Nothing is woke or political about that choice. Any normal human being is capable of making any of those choices.

There are plenty of "White" folks who are just ignorant. Like many "White" people had no idea about "Black" Wall Street until the new" Watchmen" series. And you had the type who were angry that someone would reveal this truth and make "White" people look bad.

Then you had others that had their eyes opened and understood the connection of those past injustices to today. They appreciated not being ignorant any longer.

[Msputiton]

Yeah.
Some people like the lies because it makes white people seem better than everyone else, and others who are willing to learn the truth even if it isn't what they want to hear

[NathanDavis]

I've never actually met someone who idolizes Columbus as a hero... lol, but I am sure some are out there

to me and "in my world" he's just another piece of history (which we were taught with more accurate accounts and not in a sense of idolize him) and he was just another piece of history till... the more modern days of the internet in which "woke culture" started to make a big deal out of him and all those controversial pieces of history

to this day, I just ignore it all together... lol, and I don't mean history as it is, just all the modern woke noise around it and him

[RolandCuthbert]

I know some folks who are Italian-American who idolize him. I saw a thread here claiming that anti-woke folks are defaming him or some silliness. When all the dude has to do is pick up a book. We have eyewitness accounts of Columbus and his men. We have accounts from Columbus and his men themselves.

"While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful woman, whom the Lord Admiral [Columbus] gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked — as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought she had been brought up in a school for whores."

[NathanDavis]

the "funniest" thing for me was that... despite of all what those European folks did so heinously, they called natives the savage ones, barbarians, and heathens that needed the "right way" of the Lord

crazy stuff... but that's also us in a nutshell, that's big part of humanity

[Bluemax]

It shouldn't be considered "woke." It should be considered a simple search for truth.

As I understand it, there was a push in the 1920s by Italian immigrants to kind of play up the virtues of Columbus. Also, Washington Irving did a number on American understanding of historical events. Sadly it seems to have stuck. It shouldn't.

That being said, I do take issue on Columbus's navigational abilities, some errors you made about Eratosthanes, and Columbus not "discovering America" and having never stepped foot in either North or South America.

That will have to wait, however.

[RolandCuthbert]

That may well be. I have to admit that there was a time when Italians had issues integrating into American Culture and were considered to be outsiders. Especially around WWII. Most people do not know that Italians also were interned like the Japanese.

I was corrected on the South America claim. He did step foot in modern day Venezuela. So I have conceded that.

As for your other issues, I await your next post.

[Bluemax]

I have held on to my social studies books from 4th grade to 6th grade, and you and I are about the same age, Roland, so these books are from the same time that you went to school. My own textbooks don't mention that Columbus proved the earth was round, or that he was the only person at the time to believe it was round. Furthermore, my sixth-grade textbook does mention his cruelty to the Native Americans. Also, having been a teacher for twenty-two years, I have yet to encounter a textbook that has made Columbus out to be a good guy, and all the ones I have taught from *do* make reference to his killing and enslaving of the Native Americans. All of them do make reference to his geography being off. The narrative that he was a heroic explorer bent on serious scientific discovery is gone, at least in the textbooks I've used in California. Long gone.

[Bluemax]

I have had the pleasure of visiting the Library of Congress and seeing their excellent exhibit about maps, which includes a lot of maps from Columbus's era and before. I recommend you see for yourself, if you're ever in Washington D. C. You'll find maps that refer to North and South America as simply "America." They believed what we now consider two continents to be just one back then. In his third voyage, Columbus raise Central America. Now, it's debatable if Central America is considered part of North or South America. In the textbooks of my youth, and some textbooks I see today, it is considered part of North America. Some consider it part of South America, stating the cultural distinctions that separate it. It's a debatable point. I've even read some geographers who consider Mexico part of South America for that reason. It's arguable that not only did he step foot in South America, but also North America. It depends on your definition of the two continents. Furthermore, did he discover it even though there were people already inhabiting it? Most people would say yes. I am among those people. It was unknown to most Europeans (the Vikings did not widely spread their knowledge of Vinland), to Africans, or to Asians (probably).

[Bluemax]

Many have contended that something is only discovered if a dead European male found it. I don't believe this is the case. Did the Polynesians discover South America? Almost certainly! The Polynesians cultivated crops that were from South America. This is almost certainly evidence that they landed there (and there is some potential evidence in their navigation chants). Thor Hyerdahl certainly misinterpreted this as evidence that Polynesians were from South America. Yet when the Polynesians arrived in South America, South American Indians were already there. To which I say, "So what?" The Polynesians didn't know that continent existed. Relative to them, they discovered it. I would say the same thing if the Taino had constructed ships that sailed to England. In that case, of course they would have discovered Europe. And so what if England isn't attached to mainland Europe (as was the case of the Caribbean Isles). England is considered part of Europe (just as the Caribbean Isles are considered part of the Americas). The Taino didn't know about it. I would absolutely say they discovered Europe. Just like the Polynesians did in fact discover South America.

Again, in no textbook I've ever taught from nor in the textbooks of my childhood did they ever mention or even suggest that Columbus discovered land that would now be considered part of what is the United States. The maps make this abundantly clear.

[RolandCuthbert]

So you were never had to watch cartoons like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoLZ5E9xtIY

And I don't remember textbooks teaching anything about Columbus. We didn't cover his trip in any detail until high school. But when I was in kindergarten, those are the cartoons we were shown. And we were also told that Columbus figured this out, because he could see how the ships dipped below the horizon instead of disappearing in the distance. I would really like to see your textbooks, because I don't have any of course. But there were none that mentioned cruelty of Columbus and his men. I can think of a bunch of occurrences taking about the cruelty of the Indigenous.

1. The rituals of the Aztecs.
2. The cruelty of the Maya.
3. And the massacres perpetrated by American Indians. The one we studied when I was six was the Fort Dearborn Massacre.

I can go into many more details about the history I was taught. Indeed, it got better when I left public school. But it was still a skewed biased version of history.

[Bluemax]

Onwards to navigation. This is a subject that fascinates the hell out of me, both as a pilot, a sailor, and a teacher.

I'm afraid it's just too simple to dismiss him as a poor navigator. Poor geographer? Well, there you have a better argument. But Columbus was generally a good navigator in his day.

Let's start with Eratosthenes. He didn't calculate the circumference of the earth by measuring lengths of the shadows of sticks at different times of the day. He did so by measuring the lengths of shadows *at the same local time* from *two different latitudes*. He got it more or less accurate, probably to within 5 to 10 percent of the earth's actual circumference. But we don't know *exactly* how far off he was because units of measurement were far from standardized back then. And Eratosthenes wasn't the only one who calculated the circumference of the earth. Pythagoreans did it. Arabs did it. Indians did it. Byzantines did it. Guess what? None of them agreed with each other. Again, this mistake is understandable when you consider that units of measurement varied not just from place to place, but from era to era. Which compounded error upon error! ;)

Now Columbus *did* operate from calculations that cut the circumference of the earth by about 25%. Furthermore, most scholars had accepted Eratosthenes' calculations. But not all. By the way, it's possible that Isabella and her crowd believed Columbus was wrong but saw it as a win/win situation. If the earth is bigger, then Columbus could potentially return with more land to claim. If it was smaller, than bingo! They had their new land route. Any rate, Columbus wasn't the only person to cut the circumference of the earth. Most scholars erred on the side of it being smaller than it was (including Eratosthenes).

[RolandCuthbert]

I don't concede any point that he stepped foot in North America. What he visited is not considered to be North America. Central America has always been considered to be Guatemala to Panama.

[RolandCuthbert]

The point is that the information about the earth being around was known for over 1200 years. And if he didn't calculate it from looking at different lengths, then cool. I am an old dude. My memory has faded since high school. But you pointing out the syntactical issues with stated facts does not disprove my argument. In fact, your observations only strengthen it.

Why would people argue even in this "take" that he proved the world was round and most people thought it was flat?

This is one of the first posts I received here,

As much as your woke learnings are moronic to say the least. Yes, he wasn't the best person. But, hey, 99% then agreed with slavery and the that the world was flat. It was the "believe the science" of the day." @MrTaboo

[Bluemax]

Columbus's celestial observations left much to be desired. But then again so did virtually everyone else's back then. Longitude was a problem. They knew the theory but didn't have the accurate clocks to work with. Usually, the problem of longitude was solved by observing an eclipse and noting the time difference from some other known point. Columbus did observe two eclipses during two of his voyages (the third and fourth I think), and his calculations ranged from wrong to very wrong. However, right up until the first half of the 17th century, Portuguese and Spanish mariners did the same thing... and god similarly erroneous results. When Magellan attempted to circumnavigate the globe, it was widely believed, including by Magellan himself, that the Americas were thin and that the Pacific Ocean was small (I entreat you to look up maps of the world from that era). They were profoundly wrong. Columbus was no more a poor geographer than many in his day.

[RolandCuthbert]

Yet and still he was heralded as some genius navigator. None of your statements refute this.

You guys don't seem to understand what you are arguing. The point is he was being remembered in a much different light than the truth about his life. Here you are trying to refute the evidence of that. By claiming this view is not popular in our society. And all you have to do is look at this "take" for the evidence that you are dead wrong. Of course people believe in this fiction about Columbus. Because that is what they were taught.

We even have a dude here claiming Columbus sailed to Greenland first.

"Fact is Christopher Columbus took a massive of leap of faith taking a few sailing Carracks west across the Atlantic ocean to find a route to the east. It may have been a case that he or others knew there was land there, I know columbus on occasion sailed to Greenland which is part of North America and Iceland and the Icelanders would have been able to tell him of the vikings who sailed and settled in North America for a time."

[Bluemax]

Now what about his navigation.

I have to say Columbus could be considered a fairly good navigator. In all his voyages to the New World, one must ask did he hold true course? Did he account for wind drift? Did he accurately dead reckon? Yes, yes, and yes. He maintained, more or less, his true course in that he held the parallel he was trying to sail. He even noted magnetic variance and accounted for it as best he could. He altered his relative heading to adjust for winds and currents. He correctly (accurate to within 10% or so) calculated how far he had traveled in spite of having not sighted land for more than a month. Coincidentally, the Caribbean was right where he believed Asia to be (by the way, Asia was consistently measured to be longer than it actually was by Europeans). Also, on his return trip to Europe, he was spot on. On the first voyage, he raised the Azores within a day or two of his calculations when his other officers believed they were more than a week away. In his career prior to the discovery of the Americas, he had a justly earned reputation of being a good navigator, consistently making efficient trips to the Azores, the Canaries, the Madieras, and even Iceland (wherein he was out of sight of land for many days and again raised the island within a day or two of his predictions... in a time when it wasn't unheard of to be weeks off schedule).

[Bluemax]

When you consider that there were all kind of inaccurate measurements of the earth and its features, including for some strange reason the idea that the earth was 50/50 water/land (based on no evidence at all), and how wonky the existing maps of the world were, and how units of measurement weren't standardized (Greek stadia weren't even the same depending on which century you were going by... which weren't the same as Arabic... which weren't the same as French... which weren't the same as Spanish... etc.), and ideas that there possibly still were creatures like centaurs and griffons in existence, I'd say Columbus did alright by his navigation.

[RolandCuthbert]

Well, that is not what we were told. He was a supposed to be a genius. I am not going to argue his navigation skills. Because I have no knowledge of sailing. Especially sailing in the 15th century. But a number of things should be painfully obvious.

1. He had access to much more accurate information about the size of the globe.

2. And being ignorant of that information could have proven fatal.

3. What he had prepared was woefully inadequate for the voyage. And it was dumb luck he found any land at all.

4. The ships he had were much too small, he didn't have anywhere near enough supplies, and his own crew was near mutiny by the time he reached the West Indes.

5. Then on to the obvious. Truthfully, we do not remember Columbus for his navigation. We remember him for finding his way to the West Indes and South America. Paving the way for Europeans to expand into this hemisphere.

That's what he should be remembered for. There are lots of great navigators throughout history.

[RolandCuthbert]

Your argument is now bleeding into things that are simply irrelevant. I introduced the Greeks as an example of more accurate information that Columbus should have had access to. Given that he was taking a voyage into the unknown. The size of the earth is a pretty relevant piece of information needed for sailing halfway around the world to get to the East Indies. The other things the Greeks proposed have nothing to do with this discussion. Because that calculation was based upon mathematics. Not superstition.

[monorprise]

1: He discovered it for the wider world, and for the last time.

2: At the time nobody he knew of knew where he was going. He took the chance and won this is what explorers do.

3: He also never believed he was in America rather than east asia, but he did discover theses contents nonetheless.

4: Bartolomé was a very controversial figure, who's story was refuted, and generally an a great exaggeration at best and not exactly accurate in many details. That said in his day war was brutal everywhere, you should have seen what the same Spanish just got done doing to the moors.

Expecting people of that time to respect YOUR values on how to wage (and really lose judging by the people who agree with you track record.) war is as unrealistic as it is unfair. The Spanish were actually interested in getting and holding the land. Not being nice to the people they were fighting.

[RolandCuthbert]

1. This statement does not address my point. Fix it. Again, he didn't discover the world was round.

2. Neither did he. The Greeks had already worked out the approximate circumference of the earth, centuries before.

3. I don't think you read my take. Again, he didn't discover anything. But I was wrong about him not making it to South America. He landed at modern-day Venezuela.

4. I don't find him controversial at all. The only thing seen as "controversial" by modern day historians is his estimates on the number of Taino Indians, three million would have been an impossible number. We have multiple accounts by different people. We have the accounts from Columbus' men themselves.

a. Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican missionary denounced the treatment of the Taino in 1511.

b. Michele de Cuneo details a rape of a woman who was "given" to him by Columbus. Cuneo details several acts of brutality, cutting off the heads of natives, etc. There are accounts of Columbus son ordering act an Indigenous woman's tongue cut out. But I am not trying to convince you. If you wanted, you could have done all this research yourself.

c. We know that that the chieftains in the region revolted because of their treatment. Their leader was burned at the stake for his efforts.

d. You can reference the work of Andrés Reséndez. There is Lewis Hanke. There are dozens of folks who research the history of Taino Indians, their culture and traditions. I have found no one who disagrees with the view that the Taino were subjected to brutality, slavery and genocide. All under the governorship of Christopher Columbus. There are bunch of historians who certify this from Laurence Bergreen to Benjamin Keen to Vincent Schilling who is below;

www.youtube.com/watch

[RolandCuthbert]

Just needed to correct something, the account of the man having his nose and ears cut off and then woman who had her tongue removed was actually ordered by Columbus' brother Barthlomew. This is based upon an account by Francisco de Bobadilla.

Now on to the ridiculous issue context of time. The point is that Columbus didn't even respect the context of the values of his time. He was repeatedly told to not brutalize the Indigenous. With a chorus a voices that grew loud and louder until he was brought back to Spain in chains and stripped of his governorship. And I want to remind you this emotional outburst has nothing to do with the actual point. Why is it considered to be "woke" to do the research, find countless sources of brutality, write about it, and want a more honest portrayal of a person we were told for decades was a hero?

[monorprise]

@RolandCuthbert
1: The fact that it was already demonstrated the world was round by great scientist of prior generations does not change the fact that many people of that age believed it may be of any other shape and Columbus could indeed fall off the map. Columbus himself as recall hearing actually thought it was pear shaped. Columbus helped put that to rest for the last time.

2: Again the fact that the Greeks, and other great thinkers had previous worked out the size of the earth does not mean the public was aware of this fact nor what was in the America. Columbus clearly didn't know or he would have had to pack far more provisions.

3: Being the not being the first human to discover something does not mean he didn't discover it, He was the first European to discover that part of North America and the last for most of the world for the others did not tell the rest of the world as Columbus did.

4: I know your a fan of Michele anti-Spanish, used as propaganda by Enemies of Spain. I don't really see the point in harping on some war 500+ years ago, what relevance is it today?
Why are we condemning a man who may or may not have done something hardly unusual among the people of his day? Rather than celebrating the unusual and notable thing he DID in fact do discover for the last time the new world.

Do we want future explorers or do we want to find fault in everyone who didn't agree with and conform to every modern value we have?
There is basically nobody in history that you or some future people won't find condemable for something they did.

[RolandCuthbert]

1. Many people? What source do you cite for this? Educated people in his age knew very well the earth was round. Reference Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, there are countless historians that confirm this. Especially when you speak about navigators of the oceans.

2. The public was aware. Again, anyone with an education was aware. And it is kind of silly to suggest that this wasn’t common knowledge. Unless you are talking about populations that were illiterate.

3. Again to discover means to obtain sight or knowledge for the first time. It is a pretty simple definition.

4. I cite multiple sources. You cite zero. I think that means you lose.

[Ill_made_Knight]

It's permanent annual wedge issue that can be used to "other" native Americans and keep their base angry for a little while every year. It's actually pretty similar in function to what they do when the removal of Confederate monuments comes up, even if most of these "monuments" were created and put in place in the sixties and 70's. Prime example of this is the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest that was recently removed from the Tennessee state house... it was made in 1978... they have to keep these people stirred up always so they can generate outrage against literally anything at precisely any moment... even a green candy cartoon character changing shoes or a plastic potato dropping the gender designation from it's name...
Hell they even whip them into a frenzy to control what descriptive words are acceptable. Woke only has a bad connotation because "they" said so.

[RolandCuthbert]

How is it a wedge issue? And dude, you couldn't go one sentence before introducing Confederate monuments which is an issue not even remotely related to this one? If you want to talk about Confederate monuments start your own take. You won't contaminate mine.

If you have something to say about Columbus cool. If not, move on.

As for this dude, we don't remember Hitler in a favorable light. And no one complains about that.

[Ill_made_Knight]

I'm pointing out the way they use things like fake history to keep the shit stirred up... apologies if you feel like I soiled your post... we SHOULD be on the same team... I'll steer clear of commenting in future though

[RolandCuthbert]

Dude, nothing you said made any sense.

[Ill_made_Knight]

Yeah, I can see how that could be true... very good take on Columbus by the way, and the video was funny as hell.
I'm just so focused on the current stupidity and the methods they are using to warp reality...

[RolandCuthbert]

AceVane is a national treasure. Some of his stuff is really rough. But I love that kind of humor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czovx747e9c

[JamesDiaz11]

Because the "truth" that you're talking about lacks context, and doesn't describe the barbarity of the times, and the "Indians."

Liberals typically infantilize Native Americans, by projecting their ideal of innocence on them, as if they were peaceful people who welcomed all the European explorers, and were simply slaughtered like helpless children- instead of waging warfare (previously against each other, then against the Europeans), conducting raids, and committing every imaginable act of brutality (genocide, rape, etc.) that Liberals point out about Columbus.

When you only tell half the story to demonize white people it's "woke."

[RolandCuthbert]

So my truth lacks context? Can you explain why you are conflating American Indian tribes with the Taino Indians?

Do you need a map?

The Taino Indians lived in modern day Dominican Republic. That is as far as Columbus made it sir.

He never saw the North American continent where American Indian tribes, we know made their home. And he basically erased the Taino Indians from the face of this earth.

So tell me how your context fits. I blame the public school system for not educating you.

[JamesDiaz11]

How am I inappropriately conflating an Indian tribe within the greater Western Hemisphere, vis-a-vis Spanish/ European explorers, with the broader story of these these two groups? They aren't the same tribe, sure, but you're acting like they're completely different things- I blame your ideology, and lack of education for your ignorance.

Let me educate you: disease killed off most of the early tribes that Europeans came into contact with, including on Hispaniola; this is a widely accepted fact.

Regardless of individual incidents, which again lack context (and the entire story), Columbus' voyage (s) opened European settlement (and flourishing) of the Western Hemisphere, and as such he should be considered a hero to his people. Was he benign? Of course not, but how many historical figures are?

Your "woke" rhetoric comes from the safety and luxury of the world white/ European people made, which you have chosen to critique because (as a presumably non-white person) our conquests make you feel inferior and weak. Non-white people remedy this feeling by anachronistically applying current moral sentiments onto a particular variation of the distant past.

[RolandCuthbert]

Yes, they are completely different things. If you think they are the same, that is because of the way you were raised and taught.

You can ask any American Indian, if you can find one. They identify with a specific culture, tribe, and history. Navajo don't pretend to be Pueblo Indians. Seminoles don't pretend to be Cherokee.

The Taino Indians are no longer with us. They were declared extinct centuries ago. But somehow, the genocide against them is justified because the Apache and Mohawk had a war?

That is beyond crazy.

If you have some information on the culture/conduct of the Taino Indians, provide it. Otherwise, stuff that crap you claim is Indigenous history about other tribes is just garbage.

I don't know what killed off most of the tribes we associate with North America. I have some members of those tribes in my discussion group. We have never discussed that in any detail.

But the Taino Indians were massacred. They were massacred as punishment. They were massacred for fun. Many committed suicide. Mothers would drown their children to keep them from becoming slaves, being raped or tortured by the Spaniards.

And we know all of this from eyewitness accounts.

Again, I am not here to claim he can't be your hero. But why is it woke, if I don't accept him as mine. It is like if he isn't accepted universally it is insulting to you. And I definitely think that his should be taught in school. But it should be taught truthfully. I enumerated facts in mytake. I didn't lie or spin anything. If you think the lives of the Taino were worth it. That's on you. But to pretend this is political or insulting "White" folks is beyond insanity, craziness and buffoonery.

It was a "White" man who wrote down these atrocities and took him to another "White" man named King Ferdinand. Who decided that your "White" Columbus needed to be punished. That identity "White" you sling around is weird. It seems you only apply it at certain to make certain political points.

[JamesDiaz11]

Your selective focus is tantamount to saying "one guy punched another" (not discussing what is boxing, what is a match, or why they were in the ring) which is why my description is informative, not an inappropriate conflation to avoid an inconvenient truth. Example: Tokyo/ Dresden was firebombed, killing civilians. Yea, but it was WW2, and we were fighting the Nazis/ the Empire of Japan...

"Eyewitness accounts," from pre-modern conquerors and vanquished alike are notoriously unreliable- and nearly always err on the side of hyperbole. Of course conquerors would return to their king and boast (exaggerate) of their successes... This is how a relatively un-noteworthy King of Mali became the "richest person in the history of the world" (i. e. Mansa Musa, *eye roll).

Lastly, I have several business partners from Yankton and Rose Bud (Sioux reservations in SD), and they know far less about history than the average person. Just because they're the (fractional) remaining descendants of a vanquished people doesn't impart in them some sort of unique knowledge.

"Woke" isn't simply ANY perspective that isn't Pro-Western Civilization, differentiates in some ways, or even is occasionally critical, it is by definition an anti-Western ideology, that describes Western people are uniquely evil (making slavery synonymous of European enslavement of black African people), all other people are not only morally superior, but actually responsible for all the good that exists in the world (e. g. the movie Hidden Figures), and that denies any merit to anything Western/ White.

[RolandCuthbert]

1. You are just spinning your argument to get around the truth. The Nazis were the bad guys in WWII. Is it woke to claim they were the bad guys? Is it woke to say the Jewish Holocause was an abominable wrong? Is it woke to condemn these atrocities without talking about what wrongs the Jews could have done to provoke or justify the genocide against them? It is insulting of Western Civilization to note that the Nazis were murderous dogs? I have to say this is an interesting position.

2. If you wanted to claim one eyewitness account was wrong, but when you have several along with the personal accounts from Columbus and his men. . . maybe you are just wrong. I mean the way you talk, pretty much any incident in history has to be doubted. And the crazy thing is, not one single Taino Indian survived.

3. You don’t mind if I throw your supposed personal account with Indigenous in the garbage. I invite you to meet the ones in my discussion group. They think they know a lot about their own history, culture, and experiences. I don’t pretend to judge or know who is Indigenous or what it takes to be an Indigenous person. They tend to decide that all by themselves. Go figure.

4. I mean, I get it. You identify with Columbus the genocidal maniac. But not with the “White” people who were repulsed by his actions and the actions of his men. I mean the King of Spain had him thrown in prison. I guess we are supposed to believe that it was over nothing. And that the King of Spain isn’t “White” in this particular scenario. He isn’t an example of Western Civilization. He is somehow an example of wokeness long before the term ever existed.

I guess there is some semblance of logic in that argument somewhere. But I ain’t going to find it.

[JamesDiaz11]

1. There are no bad guys in war. Everything is fair in love and war, and the victors write the history books. For my example, It would be fair to include a disclaimer on the feeling of anti-Semitism that existed in Europe at the time, and for centuries before. To present the holocaust as a uniquely modern German action, forgets the centuries of pogroms, anti-Jewish actions in nearly every country in Europe and the Middle East. Context is important. It's simple-minded to use the terms "bad guys," or "murderous dogs," when this lacks any real description of events.
2. That is a "strawman argument," and a "false dichotomy." "Well, if you doubt this, you must simultaneously doubt everything." No, but any historian (and I am considered the "historian" in my PhD program) worth his salt will take eye-witness accounts with a healthy degree of skepticism (especially when they speak of actions in warfare, numbers, etc.). I've also gone to war, and believe me, war stories become embellished once you get home, or are looking for a medal.

[JamesDiaz11]

3. "Your estimation of Native American knowledge doesn't fit with my argument; so, I'm going to throw it out." Yea, big surprise there.
4. I'm guessing this was trying to doubt consistency in the term "white?" Your prose is such garbage it's hard to really decipher what your argument is.

Christopher Columbus, although an imperfect man of his time, was first and foremost a daring explorer. His exploits paved the way for the settlement and civilization of the Western Hemisphere, which we (at least white people) should consider as a good thing. If you want to think of him as genocidal because your people are also vanquished/ conquered people, that's fine (also know, that genocide as a term, and crime against humanity wasn't even a concept until centuries later). But it's "woke" to claim he's ONLY this, or that, and say anything outside that is not the "truth."

You: "Why don't you want to tell the truth of..."
Translation: "Why don't you want to tell exactly the parts of the story I want told, in the way I want them told, which define the person/ situation in the way that I want them described?"

[RolandCuthbert]

1. You can create whatever rationalization you need to make sure you sleep at night. No one makes woke claims about remembering the Holocaust or the Nazis. You can digest that however you wish. The point still stands.

2. Well, you will have to "prove" that to me. And I will contact my friends. And we can have a discussion about what is or is not relevant history. I know a few professors myself. Too many GaGers make claims. Few meet with me online to prove anything.

[RolandCuthbert]

3. Ah. . . so you are a nameless anonymous online GaG user but your knowledge in this cyberverse about the Indigenous should be important than my actual real life experiences with my American Indian friends who have lived on the rez, wrote books about their experiences, and even one who is the former Director of the American Indian Movement in Florida. When you post something I should just forget everything I know about the discussions I have had with friends. The stories they have told, the sources of information they have given me access to, etc. All because some guy had the courage to post anonymously at GaG that his experience with some folks who may or may not identify as Indigenous is more important.

Maybe that's a bit disingenuous.

4. Say the poster who claims "Whiteness" is insulted about the claims of Columbus' brutality. I never mentioned "White". You did. Own it.

5. And save me your speech on your feelings about Columbus. The point which you wish to avoid is that anyone else is free to reach a different conclusion. And I know you feel that the "White" race is on your side, but plenty of "White" folks reach a different conclusion as well. I am not a Taino Indian. They are gone. I am not Indigenous in the slightest. But well after I left college, I found out that he was brutal murdering genocidal manaic. And to pretend that he wasn't because the term wasn't invented then is about the craziest most unhinged weirdest thing I have heard in a very long time.

Congratulations.

So since we are putting words in each other's mouths;

You: Why come everyone hatin' on Columbus? Its wokism. It is liberalism! I hate them!

Me: Maybe it ain't. Maybe we are free to hate anyone we want. Just like like you hating us.

[RealMarek]

It’s not “woke” at all. Unfortunately, the inaccurate telling of history to support one agenda or another is common. The Columbus fantasy was constructed to encourage the acceptance of Italian immigrants. Much of our history as taught in colleges is infested with Marxist distortions, and more recently distortions from the intersectional ideologues themselves such as downplaying or denying acts of brutality, such as slavery, cannibalism, human sacrifice, and acts of war performed by indigenous people.

[RolandCuthbert]

Are you saying you were forced to celebrate and honor some Indigenous chief as a hero?

So you see why your comment makes nonsense, right?

And Indigenous folks weren't Marxist. . . seeing that Karl Marx wouldn't be born until centuries after the Taino were declared extinct.

[RealMarek]

I think you’re missing my point. My point is that history is usually distorted by one school of interpretation or another. One example is how distorted views of history through a Marxist lens, such as assuming the existence of feudalism or tension over land distribution in times and places where original sources show no evidence of it, and asserting they were causative of historical events, are most common in academia today. It is very difficult to avoid it. I’m not at all suggesting that the Taino were Marxists or that I was forced to celebrate an indigenous chief as a hero (although I happen to believe some indigenous chiefs were certainly heroic).

[RolandCuthbert]

But that doesn't make any sense. What does this have to do with pretending that Columbus discovered the world was round? Or pretending that he was a brilliant navigator? Or was a competent governor? Or didn't inflict cruelty and brutality on the Indigenous? Or wasn't sacked for his crimes and stripped of his titles?

I am just saying. Why couldn't we be told the truth?

You seem to be drawing some equivalence that doesn't exist. Like the teaching that the Indigenous never engage in slavery, "cannibalism" (not sure where that nonsense came from), and cruelty.

In fact, I have yet to see anyone produce evidence that any grade school or high school teaches such crap. It was in high school I learned of the cruelty of the Aztecs. I learned of the rituals of the Maya and Incas. I learned a lot about the Indigenous.

And almost none of it was positive.

But when it came to the Europeans, I didn't hear anything but how great, kind, and caring they were. Illustrated by the lies told about Columbus.

And what's weird is we have this reaction to the truth, under the guise that this is being political.

[RealMarek]

It has everything to do with how the Columbus narrative of the 1800s was spun. There was a political motivation for it and narrative was added to the historical events. Similarly, there was a political motivation for the widespread assumption that tensions between the emperor and magnates during the Byzantine era centered around land distribution in a feudal setting, simply because Marx predicted feudalism would occur in those conditions and despite contradictory evidence from the original sources. Most historians still refuse to drop the incorrect Marxist coloring of the historical events. Similarly, the failure to mention or outright deny widespread cannibalism during the Aztec Empire, only for recent evidence to confirm the widespread cannibalism that was cited in contemporary sources.

Are these equivalent? I don’t know. What I am saying is that the process of coloring historical events and discounting contemporary sources due to political motive is widespread and common to all political leanings.

[RolandCuthbert]

Of course there was a political goal with teaching this. What you are not explaining is how does this support your point?

Your issues with Marxism appear to have nothing to do with this re-telling of history. From what I can ascertain there may have been a new to make Columbus a bigger deal than what he was because of immigration of Italian. Whom were still facing scrutiny after WWII when they were interned like the Japanese. Then there was a move by the scientific community to show that Christians had irrational beliefs in Columbus' era and blocked scientific discovery. A narrative some in the science community that some cling to still.

And I don't what you studied in high school, but I was told of all the horrific deeds of the Aztecs, the Mayans, etc.

Including a ritual of sacrifice where the victim's hearts was cut out of his chest while it was still beating.

But we were told that the Europeans were civilized. . . which of course was a lie. There were just as savage the supposed cannibals.

That isn't Marxism.

That is lying.

[ElementoP]

It's woke (and stupid) to think the "natives" we're just a bunch of innocent peaceful teepee dwellers who were savagely murdered and pillaged by us horrible evil white people and forced off their own land and made a slave to our evil empire of industrialism. That is a giant fucking load of horse shit

No one owns an entire continent just because they were there first. You either share it or you fight for it. That's the way it was everywhere, not just America. It's still the way it is today, just look at Ukraine.

Neither party was innocent. We wanted to stay there and they wanted us to fuck off. No peaceful agreement was able to be made (until later of course) and we both murdered and pillaged each other and did horrible evil things to make this beautiful land our own. And you're god damn fucking lucky we did too. Quit complaining about Columbus and enjoy this amazing country we built. Shit, we built the fucking world because of it

[RolandCuthbert]

Y'all all sing the same stupid song. And it all based upon the same stupid ass lie.

Columbus never set one foot on the North American continent. He never set one foot on the South American Continent. And the school you went to should be torn down and all the teachers fired. Because you either don't know how to read English or you are so indoctrinated you can't understand that Taino Indians and North American Indigenous tribes are not even remotely the same culture, race, ethnic grouping or clan.

Besides justifying genocide under the lie that both sides did it is some fucking stupid nonsense. Like I said, this is equivalent to justifying the Jewish holocaust. . . only much worse. Because the Taino Indians were declared extinct in 1565.

So fuck off until you learn some common fucking sense.

[Stoner710]

1 and 2 you got a point

3 it doesn’t matter who was here prior to Columbus Discovering America Leaf Erickson step foot in Canada and he didn’t ask for a massive exploration West so ultimately his discovery of America doesn’t matter at all and the greater form of history. History if the study of significant world events that happened in the past. The facts the Taino tribe was already on the island of Hispaniola doesn’t matter because they didn’t spark a larger chain in world history,

Columba’s was actually very kind to the natives he brought sickness but he was no Hernando Cortes. Bartolomé de Las Casas Was Columbus’s main political rival who would write anything negative about his main rival to gain his position. It like taking Trump’s word over Biden because you like Biden more

[monkeynutts]

Yeah it's a common theme, the early Christian colonials often deliberately never baptized indigenous peoples, so they could brutalize them and have no moral imperative to treat them otherwise. It's interesting if you do some Reading on Captain James Cook, totally different kind of guy, and he unfairly gets labelled evil. Because others treated indigenous Australians very badly.

[RolandCuthbert]

I had no idea. I will have to get read up on James Cook. I read some of his diary entries. But I am unaware of this.

Thanks!

[monkeynutts]

I think it's important to reflect on why humans endeavour to take on impossible challenges, in the case of Cook, it was definitely recognition, that he got in a promotion and a pay raise. I think Science is a good reason to explore the world and create new connections with other cultures, unfortunately it's dangerous, and what you got to bargain with ain't always what others want, so things can get violent very quickly, and that's what happened cook, he made a wrong move and that's what got him killed.

[schittywok]

Well, your take is certainly high and mighty and so pretentious because you claim all this is non political, then you make it political. So, there's one reason for it being woke. Another reason it's woke is because history is a fucked up thing, and no one truly knows jack shit about it. It's written, erased, re-written all the time. To say you know Christopher Columbus based on your "education and research" of a man who died in 1506 is pretty fucking retarded. Based on Ashley Biden's diary her father had inappropriate showers and diddled her twat. Another reason why Columbus is so revered is because the mafia was extremely proud of that SOB, so, just like having to pay them money for protection, would you ever want to say fuck Christopher Columbus in their presence? Probably not, they whack people for less than that.

[RolandCuthbert]

You literally have posted dozens of times. And you have absolutely nothing to say.

[schittywok]

I don't? Are we really to believe you went on sojourn? Like Sean Penn? I could care less if you did. We don't kowtow to media. I have the wherewithal to be a part of the most Patriotic Country in the World. I will enter every state first before going to Country that borders my State. Fancy that, Minnesota and Texas are the most pride worthy of all. Europeans will tell you, that now the US is the most religious and most proud. I don't believe in religion but I don't sure as hell think less of my people. It's the way it's supposed to be. You have freedom. When you lose freedom, you are just a Silly Nanny. Pride just like gay pride is rampant. I don't give one flying fuck. Respect is given to all that want to be free. We have pride where we are supposed to figure out everything that doesn't require all to be Communist. King Henry the VIII, said fuck religion. It's implications are far reaching. Yet he's a monster? Well, he was, because he offed people (sometimes his wives) by axe and or swords for no other reason than his Wives were not providing him a male heir.

[RolandCuthbert]

Dude, get into some counseling and get some medication.

Quickly.

I am serious, bro.

[dragoblack]

When it comes to history, accuracy is important. To continue pushing the lies only hurts the understanding of history so we don't repeat it, especially when it is not at all true. For example, native Americans were highly intelligent with full cities, towns and all of that before their civilizations were genicided, diseased, eugenisized, raped, raided and more by settlers l, yet the natives are portrayed as nomads and unintelligent savages while settlers are not seen for the monsters they were.

[RolandCuthbert]

It is one of the most startling things about the interactions with the Indigenous. Technotilan was one of the most advanced cities the explorers had ever seen.

And it was promptly burned it to the ground.

[captain_voidwalker]

Not sure how much truth thier is to a lot of things these days. I know people seem to think every native American tribe was peaceful but thats not exactly accurate. Some where peaceful like the Cherokee and the Navajo. Others were actualy pretty savage and war like such as the apache and Azteca. I mean let's take Cortez for instance he met the Azteca and probably watched one of thier human sacrifice rituals, it that was me my first thought wouldn't have been to break bread either. I'd probably be more like shoot first shoot later shoot some more and then sort out whats what.

[RolandCuthbert]

We had no holiday dedicated to some American Indian chief. No one pretends American Indians were peaceful. And nothing you posted here addresses the point that for decades we were lied to about one of the most brutal genocidal maniacs in history.

Somehow, showing Columbus in a truer light, is synonymous with claiming Cherokee Indians were spotless.

Besides, Taino Indians did not even live on the North American continent, so what the fuck are you even talking about? They lived in modern-day Dominican Republic/Haiti. And Columbus almost wiped them off the face of the planet by himself.

It is like justifying the Jewish Holocaust. . .

just worse, because he succeeded.

[420Rachel]

I wouldn't say it's "woke" to know the truth. Actually at this point I've lost the meaning to what "woke" actually means. I remember being in school and being told the cute little stories about Columbus being the one who "discovered America" and other historical figures who were only painted in a positive light. It's important we know the truth of history, and Columbus Day should not be celebrated. What happened to the natives is horrifying...

[Still-alive]

'woke' is really just a catch all buzzword maga types like to use against anything they don't like just about. it is very meaningless

[RolandCuthbert]

I don't have an issue with people celebrating Columbus. But boy do the folks who claim to be anti-woke have a problem if certain others decide not to remember him favorably.

I have one guy posting here who claims, to dislike Columbus, is to insult the "White" race.

WTF?

[Still-alive]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25D_1BK8vLg

He probably watched this episode of the Sopranos and thought 'yup thats about right' lmao

[420Rachel]

What a crock of horseshit. 😭 How is acknowledging someone's wrongdoings being "anti-white"? He and his hooligans committed genocide. 😭 People, throughout all of history, of all shapes and colors, have been monsters.

[RolandCuthbert]

@Still-alive Dude! I didn't know the guy was Tony Soprano! That explains everything!

:D

[007kingifrit]

woke is a euphemism for neo marxist. it is communism in disguise.

all civilizations are built on genocide, but phase 1 of communism is to tell people the ugly truth of how civilization starts. Not to prevent harm or make a society better but to tear it down.

knowing "the truth" does no good.

[RolandCuthbert]

@007kingifrit Again, if there is no truth, then I will choose my lies over yours.

And again, the difference I won't be insulted if you choose to believe in something else.

[Brokenheartedx]

Didn't learn it at school, learned about the hiroshima bomb, learned about the 2 world wars, learned about the jacobite uprising, learned about the potato famine, the vikings, the romans etc etc

Nothing was white washed in our school we learned about modern history or our history.

[RolandCuthbert]

Wow. . . really? You were lucky. I was literally told by my teacher, Columbus could tell the world was round because he saw how the ships dipped below the horizon when heading out to sea. And that the folks in his age claimed the earth was flat and sat on the back of a giant turtle.

So this Columbus guy was supposed to be a genius. There was no mention of the ancient Greeks who centuries before that not only knew the Earth was round, they calculated its circumference with amazing accuracy.

[Brokenheartedx]

American history isn't taught in UK classes, except the hiroshima bombing, which didn't go down well, what a dispicable thing to do to a country. there's bombs and there was that monstrosity. Anyway the rest of our history classes was varied and interesting. We learned about the cholera outbreak too. People always say brits were colonial slave masters but the poor in Britain suffered too. Something the rest of the world should learn

[Brokenheartedx]

And the girl below typing about no blacks in restaurants, did she miss the part of no Irish and no dogs, so wasn't just blacks kept from them irish were persecuted as well... A little know fact, it's still sung at football games of a certain religious persuasion, that bloody famine song...

[RolandCuthbert]

I just want to make a couple of points.

1. The fact that Europeans don't celebrate Columbus kind of proves my point. Even Italy celebrates his less than the U. S.

2. It isn't like slavery or the civil rights movement is taught in the United States. If you asked the average American, they wouldn't know any thing about it other than the name Martin Luther King and the one line from his "I have a dream" speech. They don't know anything about his "letter from a Birmingham jail." They don't know how Medger Evers was. They have no idea about the five little girls in a Birmingham church.

As for this "girl" you mentioned, I have no idea to whom you are referring. But I wanted to address this view that somehow Americans are subjected to some rigorous training on American slavery.

That is a lie.

[bingbongbangbung]

So you're gonna pretend all the atrocities that Japan did on many Asian countries during WW2?

[bingbongbangbung]

Didn't happen*

[bingbongbangbung]

Japan was just as or even more brutal than Germany in their war crimes against neighboring countries, so them getting nuked twice was a good thing

[purplepoppy]

I was taught at school the myth about columbus discovering the world was round comes from a victorian comedy show. It was meant as a joke but people thought it was true and it stuck in the public mind.
There's also suggestions columbus had heard of land to the east from fishermen.

As for telling the truth, people don't like their simple childhood version corrupted, that's true with most history not just columbus.

[RolandCuthbert]

Wow, a comedy show? It had to be old AF. Because I was taught that nonsense when I was in kindergarten. We kept being told he could tell by watching ships sail out into the ocean.

I remember being five years old and wondering. . . why couldn't anyone else see the same thing?

It was just stupid.

[loveslongnails]

I remember failing American History in high school because the final exam was an essay test on something about the Revolutionary War or the Civil War, I can't even remember, straight from a textbook. I wrote on the paper " This is BS", handed it to the teacher and said "I'm done", and left.

[RolandCuthbert]

@loveslongnails Okay. . .

Wow!

I never had that kind of self-awareness at that age.

[schittywok]

@RolandCuthbert You fuckers keep on bitching. Ad infinitum. I remember a time where being taught the "simplicities" of eye color. We were taught that if blue eyed people fucked aka had sex with other blue eyed folks, all children would be blue eyed. We were also taught about the dominant eye color that is brown. It really, seriously, made me question if my brothers were my "brothers." To find out eye color is fucked, it means nothing. It is far more complicated than anyone knew.

[RolandCuthbert]

@schittywok Dude, I am not going to let you defecate all over this take. If you want to learn lies, that is on you. But some of us would like to know scientific historical truths. Let us decide what we think about the morality and ethics. Stop trying to explain away actions or lies.