According to a proclamation from the president, today is officially “Columbus Day,” when we honor the “many immeasurable contributions of Italy to American history.” The president’s proclamation goes on to complain that “in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy” by replacing a recognition of his “vast contributions” with talk of failings, atrocities, and transgressions.
My family has celebrated the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples' Day ever since my daughter, now 51 years old, was in second grade in 1976. On what was then known as Columbus Day (South Dakota was the first state to recognize Indigenous People’s’ Day when it changed the holiday’s name in 1990), I received a call at work from the vice-principal of her elementary school. It seems my 7-year-old daughter had been sent to his office on a disciplinary matter by her second-grade teacher. I was quite surprised as my daughter had never had any disciplinary issues at school, quite the contrary. I told the vice-principal I would be at the school shortly to meet and discuss whatever the issue had been.
On arriving at his office I and my daughter, met with the vice-principal and my daughter's teacher to discuss whatever the problem was. I was told my daughter had disrupted the teacher while she was instructing the class on the significance of Columbus Day. It seems the teacher had been explaining how Columbus was the "discoverer" of the Americas and she had been showing artists pictures of him landing and being greeted on the beach where he landed by a group of "Indians." My daughter, it seems, asked the teacher politely, "If Columbus discovered America, who were all those people meeting him when he landed." As you might imagine this resulted in much laughter from the other students embarrassing the teacher and resulting in my daughter being sent to the vice-principal.
On hearing the story, I turned to the teacher who had sent her to the vice-principal and asked what she had responded in answer to my daughter's question? It seems her only response had been to send her for disciplinary action to the vice-principal. I told the teacher that "I felt she had asked a very good question and that it deserved an answer. I told her I felt she should answer it now."
The teacher responded, "She could certainly understand where my daughter had gotten her 'smart mouth' from and she and I should have more respect for teachers."
I thanked her for the compliment, and responded that I requested "My daughter be moved to a different second-grade class with a teacher more equipped to educate her students as this one was clearly not suited to do so."
My daughter was moved to a different second-grade class the following day and since then, for my family, the second Monday in October has always been known as Indigenous Peoples' Day. We also sometimes call it the "Are you as smart as a second grader day."
Another setback tonight with a Texas Appeals Court judge overturning the lower court and ruling that only a single ballot drop-off location per county is sufficient. That includes one drop-off location for Harris County Texas, an area the size of the state of Rhode Island. But on the upside, if Georgia is an indication, there is rising determination to not be cowed by Republican contrivances to suppress the vote. People stood in line as long as ten hours to cast their ballots on Monday, with one voter summing the day as "we voted as if our lives depended on it". It does. And hopefully we all will do the same.
Over the last few days I've had an uneasy feeling, but have not been able to identify it. Last night, I finally realized that just below the surface I am carrying a lot of anger, bordering on rage. I can't read of listen to anything related to tRump and the swamp. Heather's letter today is a breath of fresh air, helping me to better understand that this is all part of a history that we have to ride through. It is my hope that Heather is teaching some very bright future historians who will carry on her legacy of making history understandable and relevant.
If the” powers that be” can confuse fact and fiction in people’s minds to the point where they can’t tell one from the other….and in the end they stop trying…the only story in town is that told by the “Authorities”.
If the “Authorities” can change the interpretation of history, and indeed the elements therein that are considered “important”, according to the prevailing political winds and convenience as opposed to the researched and considered, provable findings of specialized historians then, the people loses contact with its past, dilutes its culture and destroys its own identity.
If “real” history is not taught in schools, as opposed to the government’s currently favored, historical flavor of the month, then we cannot obtain a true picture of our place in society or of the fundamental nature of that society
The identity of each and every one of us depends upon our personal psychological makeup, our family structure and our place in our common history. If any of these elements can be deformed by propaganda through deliberate suppression or distortion of facts, through constant repetition of lies or through brute force, massive stress and enforced ignorance, then we lose a significant degree of the control over our identity. We cede the power to say who we really are to that outside force and accept, thereafter, to be told who we are. We cannot then achieve what we feel we are here for in life and what we aspire to; we are enchained in the “purpose” imposed upon us by the prevailing regime.
This is exactly what Putin is trying to do to the Russian people and what Trump admires so clearly…..and would dearly like to impose on America. People resist and destroy those who would deny their rights in time! Let’s make that time NOW.
Tonight on CNN, a masked reporter was asking Trump supporters if they were worried about being at his crowded rally with no masks. They repeated all of his misleading statements about the coronavirus. Some even went so far as to say if it was their time to die, so be it. At the end of his report he asked a group of them, “If President Trump asks you to put a mask on tonight will you do it?“ “Yes. Absolutely,” they said.
They will accept and repeat his disinformation about history and education as well.
We have a long climb out of this mess.
My husband thinks Trump might become an expatriate and move to Russia January 21 to avoid imprisonment.
Funny thing, I don’t even read the “letters” on Facebook anymore, I just go there to share them in the hope that others will open their minds enough to read them and think about things. This is mostly because of all the hate on Facebook these days. Then, what do I find here this morning? Another hateful troll who chooses to spew a perverted interpretation of not only what was in the letter but of history itself. Must be hitting a nerve to be desperate enough to argue falsehoods that they pay money to do it. Thanks, now I feel a little better for having said that and can say what I actually meant to.
In the first part of today’s letter trump’s “proclamation” sounded like the rantings of a bananna republic tin pot despot. So that’s where we are.
When reading the second part of today’s letter, I was struck by the thought that it sounds like trump, being a 70+ year old white male, seems to be echoing the outdated understanding of our history that he likely formed in either elementary or jr high school and never bothered to learn anything new. He and his so called ‘base’ insist that’s our ‘true’ history but, really, it’s just another historical artifact - much like old, outdated items of furniture that are interesting to look at and help us understand how people *used to* live, like an icebox that evolved into the modern refrigerator, for example. There is a scientific principle that says the only constant in life is change. The same goes for history. Time to evolve.
Wow!! So clear. So concise. So enlightening. I love the explanation of History vs. Commemoration! We can both commemorate George Washington for his heroic role in building our country as a democracy instead of a monarchy and, at the same time, be repulsed by his active participation in the reprehensible practice of human slavery.
I didn't know the story behind the founding of Columbus day - it deepens the story for me, though I still can't get past the irony of people saying that Columbus "discovered" the Americas. I'm sure the Arawaks, if they were still around, would argue with that characterization.
I am very pleased to hear Du Bois's name associated with the attempt to clarify the significance of people of color to American society. I got my Ph.D. in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst where the W.E.B. Du Bois Library houses most of his papers in their special collections department (most of the rest of the papers are in Ghana). When I was teaching history classes during grad school, I would take whole classes of students to the library after reading The Souls of Black Folk, and the special collections people would lay out Du Bois's hand-written drafts of several chapters of Souls for the students to read. It was always fun to see a bunch of minds exploding when they took a look at that. And then, when the librarian told them how to use a finding aid to request to look at anything in the collection, suddenly there were a bunch on 19-year-olds enthusiastically reading letters he wrote to his daughter (he wasn't very nice to her), and receipts for donations he made, and so on. Given that Du Bois was born and grew up in Western Massachusetts, I've always considered him to be a homeboy.
Below is a link that shows a sampling of the UMass special collections' digitized papers related to The Gift of Black Folk that HCR mentioned. On a quick glance I noticed a typed draft of chapter 3 and an outline of the book. Anyway, there it is.
The right wingers hate any history that doesn't comport with their mythological tales of our wonderfulness. I wrote a book about the air war in Korea, "MiG Alley", which strips away the Air Force's cold war myth of a 10:1 victory ratio over the "commies" and uses facts from both sides to paint a picture of a very close-fought campaign of Americans against Russians, in which the Russian pilots were as good as their US opponents and shows how the US kept the other side from appearing over the battlefield, thus ensuring no communist victory, while despite the Air Force dropping more bombs on North Korea than were dropped on Germany in WW2, the other side kept their forces on the battlefield supplied, thus leading to stalemate. The book has been well-received by readers and reviewers, but there is a significant group of wingers who give it poor reviews for being "woke" history and for being "distasteful" for debunking the mythology - Americans not being 100% the most wonderfullest ever.
The Right is the enemy, and that is not going to stop on November 4, and it is only going to be stopped when they are seen as The Enemy and treated as such, with laws against domestic terrorism, and with reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine as law rather than regulation, thus putting their propaganda outlets out of business as currently organized and shutting off he Noise Machine.
My history knowledge informs me that the voyage of Columbus was financed by the Spanish monarchy, not the Italians. Columbus just happened to be Italian. It would be like an American expedition being financed by Mexico because the Americans didn't have the cash or desire to finance exploration. And then attributing the "discovery" to an American even though in this scenario, at the time, all the fame and riches went to Mexico. The reason for the journey was to find gold and bring it back for Spain. Columbus was was an armed Spanish "mercenary."
Besides, Columbus never set foot on the American continent. What Columbus "discovered" was the Bahamas archipelago and then the island later named Hispaniola, now split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On his subsequent voyages he went farther south, to Central and South America. He never got close to what is now called the United States.
In The Republic Plato argues that citizens will accept the perfect society only if they have a founding myth in which to believe. Plato spent his days in rational argument, and felt all too clearly what is true of the human race: by nature we are magical thinkers and need myths to make sense of our lives and the world. The Enlightenment project is the battle to replace magical thinking and myth with rational thinking and science. We are many centuries into that battle; we must fight for it day by day and along the way we are reframing what it means to be human. I'm enjoying every day Heather's contribution to rationality.
Thank you, Heather, for doing what you do with bringing little known history meaningfully into our awareness, and then righteously advocating for the modern day role—and critical necessity—of historians.
Thank you HCR for telling me about the origins of Columbus Day. I had no idea where it came from, so on this fact I was as ignorant as the 60+ million Trump voters. Assuming they don’t know either. This has been a year of discovery about USA history thanks to you and all the terrible events (pandemic, George Floyd, etc.) that transpired. I’m surprised and grateful to learn the truth and angry for the many years my head was buried in the sands of ignorance. Lifelong deception is hard to forgive. But, hope springs eternal (Didn’t Aristotle call hope a waking dream?). From the Trump Wreck, a better nation can emerge if we decisively VOTE HIM OUT. Hooray for Stacey Abrams and GA voters. “Continue to Speak Out, Dr. Fauci. You must have known Trump would use you. You’re 78 with an illustrious career behind you. Can you honestly remain neutral? You’re the most admired doctor in America. Do you want to see your misused words help elect Trump for another 4 years!” Sending postcards today. Citizen Campaign Volunteer over and out. ❤️🤍💙
Hi Heather fine letter as ever. On history and rhyme, being from Ireland we like the eloquence (and optimism) of Heaney
History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
- Seamus Heaney
My family has celebrated the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples' Day ever since my daughter, now 51 years old, was in second grade in 1976. On what was then known as Columbus Day (South Dakota was the first state to recognize Indigenous People’s’ Day when it changed the holiday’s name in 1990), I received a call at work from the vice-principal of her elementary school. It seems my 7-year-old daughter had been sent to his office on a disciplinary matter by her second-grade teacher. I was quite surprised as my daughter had never had any disciplinary issues at school, quite the contrary. I told the vice-principal I would be at the school shortly to meet and discuss whatever the issue had been.
On arriving at his office I and my daughter, met with the vice-principal and my daughter's teacher to discuss whatever the problem was. I was told my daughter had disrupted the teacher while she was instructing the class on the significance of Columbus Day. It seems the teacher had been explaining how Columbus was the "discoverer" of the Americas and she had been showing artists pictures of him landing and being greeted on the beach where he landed by a group of "Indians." My daughter, it seems, asked the teacher politely, "If Columbus discovered America, who were all those people meeting him when he landed." As you might imagine this resulted in much laughter from the other students embarrassing the teacher and resulting in my daughter being sent to the vice-principal.
On hearing the story, I turned to the teacher who had sent her to the vice-principal and asked what she had responded in answer to my daughter's question? It seems her only response had been to send her for disciplinary action to the vice-principal. I told the teacher that "I felt she had asked a very good question and that it deserved an answer. I told her I felt she should answer it now."
The teacher responded, "She could certainly understand where my daughter had gotten her 'smart mouth' from and she and I should have more respect for teachers."
I thanked her for the compliment, and responded that I requested "My daughter be moved to a different second-grade class with a teacher more equipped to educate her students as this one was clearly not suited to do so."
My daughter was moved to a different second-grade class the following day and since then, for my family, the second Monday in October has always been known as Indigenous Peoples' Day. We also sometimes call it the "Are you as smart as a second grader day."
Another setback tonight with a Texas Appeals Court judge overturning the lower court and ruling that only a single ballot drop-off location per county is sufficient. That includes one drop-off location for Harris County Texas, an area the size of the state of Rhode Island. But on the upside, if Georgia is an indication, there is rising determination to not be cowed by Republican contrivances to suppress the vote. People stood in line as long as ten hours to cast their ballots on Monday, with one voter summing the day as "we voted as if our lives depended on it". It does. And hopefully we all will do the same.
Over the last few days I've had an uneasy feeling, but have not been able to identify it. Last night, I finally realized that just below the surface I am carrying a lot of anger, bordering on rage. I can't read of listen to anything related to tRump and the swamp. Heather's letter today is a breath of fresh air, helping me to better understand that this is all part of a history that we have to ride through. It is my hope that Heather is teaching some very bright future historians who will carry on her legacy of making history understandable and relevant.
If the” powers that be” can confuse fact and fiction in people’s minds to the point where they can’t tell one from the other….and in the end they stop trying…the only story in town is that told by the “Authorities”.
If the “Authorities” can change the interpretation of history, and indeed the elements therein that are considered “important”, according to the prevailing political winds and convenience as opposed to the researched and considered, provable findings of specialized historians then, the people loses contact with its past, dilutes its culture and destroys its own identity.
If “real” history is not taught in schools, as opposed to the government’s currently favored, historical flavor of the month, then we cannot obtain a true picture of our place in society or of the fundamental nature of that society
The identity of each and every one of us depends upon our personal psychological makeup, our family structure and our place in our common history. If any of these elements can be deformed by propaganda through deliberate suppression or distortion of facts, through constant repetition of lies or through brute force, massive stress and enforced ignorance, then we lose a significant degree of the control over our identity. We cede the power to say who we really are to that outside force and accept, thereafter, to be told who we are. We cannot then achieve what we feel we are here for in life and what we aspire to; we are enchained in the “purpose” imposed upon us by the prevailing regime.
This is exactly what Putin is trying to do to the Russian people and what Trump admires so clearly…..and would dearly like to impose on America. People resist and destroy those who would deny their rights in time! Let’s make that time NOW.
Tonight on CNN, a masked reporter was asking Trump supporters if they were worried about being at his crowded rally with no masks. They repeated all of his misleading statements about the coronavirus. Some even went so far as to say if it was their time to die, so be it. At the end of his report he asked a group of them, “If President Trump asks you to put a mask on tonight will you do it?“ “Yes. Absolutely,” they said.
They will accept and repeat his disinformation about history and education as well.
We have a long climb out of this mess.
My husband thinks Trump might become an expatriate and move to Russia January 21 to avoid imprisonment.
Funny thing, I don’t even read the “letters” on Facebook anymore, I just go there to share them in the hope that others will open their minds enough to read them and think about things. This is mostly because of all the hate on Facebook these days. Then, what do I find here this morning? Another hateful troll who chooses to spew a perverted interpretation of not only what was in the letter but of history itself. Must be hitting a nerve to be desperate enough to argue falsehoods that they pay money to do it. Thanks, now I feel a little better for having said that and can say what I actually meant to.
In the first part of today’s letter trump’s “proclamation” sounded like the rantings of a bananna republic tin pot despot. So that’s where we are.
When reading the second part of today’s letter, I was struck by the thought that it sounds like trump, being a 70+ year old white male, seems to be echoing the outdated understanding of our history that he likely formed in either elementary or jr high school and never bothered to learn anything new. He and his so called ‘base’ insist that’s our ‘true’ history but, really, it’s just another historical artifact - much like old, outdated items of furniture that are interesting to look at and help us understand how people *used to* live, like an icebox that evolved into the modern refrigerator, for example. There is a scientific principle that says the only constant in life is change. The same goes for history. Time to evolve.
Wow!! So clear. So concise. So enlightening. I love the explanation of History vs. Commemoration! We can both commemorate George Washington for his heroic role in building our country as a democracy instead of a monarchy and, at the same time, be repulsed by his active participation in the reprehensible practice of human slavery.
I didn't know the story behind the founding of Columbus day - it deepens the story for me, though I still can't get past the irony of people saying that Columbus "discovered" the Americas. I'm sure the Arawaks, if they were still around, would argue with that characterization.
I am very pleased to hear Du Bois's name associated with the attempt to clarify the significance of people of color to American society. I got my Ph.D. in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst where the W.E.B. Du Bois Library houses most of his papers in their special collections department (most of the rest of the papers are in Ghana). When I was teaching history classes during grad school, I would take whole classes of students to the library after reading The Souls of Black Folk, and the special collections people would lay out Du Bois's hand-written drafts of several chapters of Souls for the students to read. It was always fun to see a bunch of minds exploding when they took a look at that. And then, when the librarian told them how to use a finding aid to request to look at anything in the collection, suddenly there were a bunch on 19-year-olds enthusiastically reading letters he wrote to his daughter (he wasn't very nice to her), and receipts for donations he made, and so on. Given that Du Bois was born and grew up in Western Massachusetts, I've always considered him to be a homeboy.
Below is a link that shows a sampling of the UMass special collections' digitized papers related to The Gift of Black Folk that HCR mentioned. On a quick glance I noticed a typed draft of chapter 3 and an outline of the book. Anyway, there it is.
https://credo.library.umass.edu/search?q=the+gift+of+black+folk&fq=FacetCollectionID%3A%22mums312%22&search=
The right wingers hate any history that doesn't comport with their mythological tales of our wonderfulness. I wrote a book about the air war in Korea, "MiG Alley", which strips away the Air Force's cold war myth of a 10:1 victory ratio over the "commies" and uses facts from both sides to paint a picture of a very close-fought campaign of Americans against Russians, in which the Russian pilots were as good as their US opponents and shows how the US kept the other side from appearing over the battlefield, thus ensuring no communist victory, while despite the Air Force dropping more bombs on North Korea than were dropped on Germany in WW2, the other side kept their forces on the battlefield supplied, thus leading to stalemate. The book has been well-received by readers and reviewers, but there is a significant group of wingers who give it poor reviews for being "woke" history and for being "distasteful" for debunking the mythology - Americans not being 100% the most wonderfullest ever.
The Right is the enemy, and that is not going to stop on November 4, and it is only going to be stopped when they are seen as The Enemy and treated as such, with laws against domestic terrorism, and with reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine as law rather than regulation, thus putting their propaganda outlets out of business as currently organized and shutting off he Noise Machine.
Courtesy of HCR Facebook readers, a progressive POV rewrite of Steve Miller’s, I mean trump’s “Columbus Day” proclamation by Justin P. Cowan:
https://www.facebook.com/25009894/posts/10105671145056891/
My history knowledge informs me that the voyage of Columbus was financed by the Spanish monarchy, not the Italians. Columbus just happened to be Italian. It would be like an American expedition being financed by Mexico because the Americans didn't have the cash or desire to finance exploration. And then attributing the "discovery" to an American even though in this scenario, at the time, all the fame and riches went to Mexico. The reason for the journey was to find gold and bring it back for Spain. Columbus was was an armed Spanish "mercenary."
Besides, Columbus never set foot on the American continent. What Columbus "discovered" was the Bahamas archipelago and then the island later named Hispaniola, now split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On his subsequent voyages he went farther south, to Central and South America. He never got close to what is now called the United States.
In The Republic Plato argues that citizens will accept the perfect society only if they have a founding myth in which to believe. Plato spent his days in rational argument, and felt all too clearly what is true of the human race: by nature we are magical thinkers and need myths to make sense of our lives and the world. The Enlightenment project is the battle to replace magical thinking and myth with rational thinking and science. We are many centuries into that battle; we must fight for it day by day and along the way we are reframing what it means to be human. I'm enjoying every day Heather's contribution to rationality.
Thank you, Heather, for doing what you do with bringing little known history meaningfully into our awareness, and then righteously advocating for the modern day role—and critical necessity—of historians.
🙏
I’m trying to imagine the president saying “orthodoxy” when reading that proclamation. Thank you for the history behind “Columbus Day”.
Thank you HCR for telling me about the origins of Columbus Day. I had no idea where it came from, so on this fact I was as ignorant as the 60+ million Trump voters. Assuming they don’t know either. This has been a year of discovery about USA history thanks to you and all the terrible events (pandemic, George Floyd, etc.) that transpired. I’m surprised and grateful to learn the truth and angry for the many years my head was buried in the sands of ignorance. Lifelong deception is hard to forgive. But, hope springs eternal (Didn’t Aristotle call hope a waking dream?). From the Trump Wreck, a better nation can emerge if we decisively VOTE HIM OUT. Hooray for Stacey Abrams and GA voters. “Continue to Speak Out, Dr. Fauci. You must have known Trump would use you. You’re 78 with an illustrious career behind you. Can you honestly remain neutral? You’re the most admired doctor in America. Do you want to see your misused words help elect Trump for another 4 years!” Sending postcards today. Citizen Campaign Volunteer over and out. ❤️🤍💙