In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And however difficult that first voyage with the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria was, it was a pleasure cruise compared to the rough seas he’s had to navigate over the past three or four decades, a period during which his reputation has gone from one of history‘s greatest heroes to one of its worst villains. Once celebrated for his accomplishments, he is now condemned for them, indicted as instigator and mastermind of colonialism, imperialism, genocide, and a host of other maladies that have afflicted humanity ever since he set sail. The evil of the West incarnate, Columbus has become the personification of that most infamous of monsters: the dead white European male.