It used to be woke to celebrate Columbus Day

When people celebrate Italian heritage or the European discovery of America, which Columbus had less to do with than we used to think considering he never really made it to North America, it’s about celebrating the exploration that led to the United States becoming the country that it is. It’s not about supporting all of the actions of Columbus, whose name in recent years has become synonymous with genocide, rape, and cultural desecration.

“No, that’s not the spirit of this event,” Tiffany Lindsey of San Francisco, who attended the festival, told KPIX5. “I mean, we’re here to celebrate our heritage, our beliefs, our background.”

Hundreds of miles away in Colorado, protesters spent the weekend blocking traffic in front of the state capitol, petitioning for the government to change the name of the holiday, which, let’s be real, for most people is less about America’s history and more about retail sales. Yet for some, it’s another sign of America’s racist heritage.

“It is time to abolish Columbus Day,” said Glenn Morris, a member of Leadership Council of the American Indian Movement of Colorado, to CBS 4 Denver. “To celebrate Columbus, and to celebrate the acts of Columbus, is an affront to native people. But, it should be an affront to people of good conscience of any community.”

More than 100 years ago, Denver was one of the first cities to celebrate Columbus Day, before the celebration became a federal holiday in 1937 thanks to President Franklin Roosevelt (who is often hailed as a liberal hero even though he unjustly locked up Japanese American citizens). The holidays origins were far from racist, and some racists actually used to protest Columbus Day celebrations.

Hating on Columbus Day is nothing new, but it wasn’t always woke to do so. In fact, some anti-immigrant groups protested the holiday because it was a favorite of immigrants. In the 1800s, it was progressive to celebrate Columbus, a figure held up by Italian and Irish immigrants as a pro-immigrant figure. White nationalists such as scholar Rasmus Bjorn Anderson complained (accurately) that Columbus didn’t discover America and (ludicrously) that he wasn’t white enough.

But how are we to respond to Columbus Day’s fraught history now?

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to have a day commemorating the people who lived here before explorers like Columbus arrived to slaughter and enslave them. Then again, if we start doing away with Columbus’ name entirely, we’ll have to rename Columbus, Ohio, and Washington, D.C. (whose name, the District of Columbia, derives from a feminization of “Columbus”). That’s just a start. We’d also have to get rid of the statue of him in New York City, though some residents are pushing for that already.

We need not scrub Columbus from our memories, but let’s introduce a less politicized lens through which to view the conversation. When people celebrate Columbus Day today, they’re not doing it because Columbus was an exemplar of character, but because he has represented a significant moment in America’s history. Considering we now realize that he never set foot on North American soil at all, we might not want to celebrate him anyway.

Many states and localities across the U.S. have decided to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. Rather than imposing a top-down solution, the movement could grow the same way the push for Columbus Day did many years ago.

Thanks to explorers like Columbus, who paved the way for the American founding, we have the opportunity to have this discussion now. We have the First Amendment, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” If people would rather celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day than Columbus Day, they ought to continue lobbying at the local level.

But there’s no need for vandalism or insults. Anti-immigrant protesters who once hated Columbus Day have tried such things already.