Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #ColumbusDay
Most recents (5)
It's #ColumbusDay and my oldest came to class with me, so I couldn't give my traditional #columbuswasamurderer lesson to my students. I was disappointed. Thankfully, Twitter is here, so here we go.
First, I do know that Columbus is in many ways a product of his time, specifically the economic and political crisis in Genoa post-1453 and the fall of Constantinople--we find Genoese cartographers, navigators and sailors all over the place in the aftermath, so...
Columbus himself is an experienced sailor--he travels the Eastern Mediterranean, up to Ireland/UK/maybe Iceland, down the coast of Africa to Guinea... he's not just some random dude with a plan, he's a random well-traveled sailor with a plan.
In my latest, I snarkily talk about all the reasons why #ColumbusDay is wack, ahistorical, and why it totally shouldn’t be a thing anymore.
essence.com/culture/christ…
essence.com/culture/christ…
Besides the “holiday” being an affront to our Indigenous siblings, it is also in line with America’s ever-present tradition of simultaneously celebrating White mediocrity and depravity and tbh, return to sender please 😐
In addition to this, if you *HAVE* to celebrate a “Christopher” today, there are others available, who aren’t directionally-challenged nincompoops.
1) Should we alter the historical narrative to make its victims feel better?
It’s #coffeetime
#ColumbusDay
Monday, October 8, 2018
It’s #coffeetime
#ColumbusDay
Monday, October 8, 2018
2) I remember when the local school changed Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day.
In-di-gen-ous.
Hard to spell.
In-di-gen-ous.
Hard to spell.
3) So I guess this is how you have to teach it now.
1. The Church provided the moral/theological grounds for the dispossession of natives and “discovery” of the New World. It did so by issuing papal bulls such as Inter Caetera (1493), written by Pope Alexander VI the year after Columbus’ voyage. #ColumbusDay #IndigenousPeoplesDay
2. This bull established that any land not inhabited by Christians was available to be “discovered,” claimed by rulers in the name of Christ. It granted Spain by divine authority “full and free power, authority, and jurisdiction of every kind” to conquer most of the Americas.
3. Inter Caetera didn’t stand alone. In fact, it was a reiteration of, and elaboration upon, the moral reasoning of prior papal bulls. For example, the bull Dum Diversas, issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1452, appealed to “Apostolic Authority” and granted the Portuguese crown:
This is one of the most uniformed pieces I've read. 1 Columbus wasn't a brave explorer. He was a guy who thought Earth was shaped like a pear with a nipple on top. The reason no one would fund him was they knew the size and shape of Earth and wo land a super ocean was uncrossable
2 he never even sat foot on our mainland, and he was almost 500 years after Lief Erickson and his sister Freydis (often left out even though she's a bad bitch). He apparently wasn't smart enough to bring someone familiar enough with the Indies to realize this wasn't it.
He and his crew raped women and children and sold girls as young as 9 into sex slavery (per his own journal). It was so bad native women killed their own children then themselves when they heard the Spanish were coming.
