It feels like this is a culture war that relies on semantics.
You can recognize that Columbus finding the Americas was a pretty big deal and arguably should be marked in some way while not actually 'celebrating' all the things that entailed.
Discovery of The Americas Day (because despite the Vikings no one outside of the Americas knew it was here lol) and a recognition that two things can be true, it was terrible for those people who were already here and also a massively important milestone in the development of the present world and in the existence of the USA (same as 4th July).
Very interesting to learn about why it came about though and I will be making sure to include that in teaching my American daughters about the day.
I think the learning about multiple aspects of the same event is the important part. I know I didn't learn about the impacts of Columbus on indigenous populations until way later. Not that I necessarily think we need to detail the way people died for kids in pre-k. But similar to Thanksgiving and learning about the Puritans it had been very one sided. We're not necessarily very good at a nation at saying look this was really important but also here is how we really hurt others. And realizing that's not saying and you should personally feel really terrible to be an American because of what people in the past did.
“Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.”
Using religion to justify the mistreatment of others has been happening for far, far too long.
It feels like this is a culture war that relies on semantics.
You can recognize that Columbus finding the Americas was a pretty big deal and arguably should be marked in some way while not actually 'celebrating' all the things that entailed.
Discovery of The Americas Day (because despite the Vikings no one outside of the Americas knew it was here lol) and a recognition that two things can be true, it was terrible for those people who were already here and also a massively important milestone in the development of the present world and in the existence of the USA (same as 4th July).
Very interesting to learn about why it came about though and I will be making sure to include that in teaching my American daughters about the day.
I think the learning about multiple aspects of the same event is the important part. I know I didn't learn about the impacts of Columbus on indigenous populations until way later. Not that I necessarily think we need to detail the way people died for kids in pre-k. But similar to Thanksgiving and learning about the Puritans it had been very one sided. We're not necessarily very good at a nation at saying look this was really important but also here is how we really hurt others. And realizing that's not saying and you should personally feel really terrible to be an American because of what people in the past did.