Category: Social Justice

I’m glad I worked on Columbus Day

One of my RAs mentioned to me that he wished Fall Break was longer and stated that he wished we had Columbus Day off like the banks do. I said we don’t get Veteren’s Day off either and that is a holiday that I’d be more willing to celebrate.

Celebrating Columbus Day means celebrating the death and genocide of the Native Americans, dubbed “Indians” by Columbus.

In fourteen hundred and ninety-three, Columbus stole all he could see. (Loewen, 2007, pp. 31)

The heroification of Columbus in American culture is also troubling for a number of reasons. He is lauded as the discoverer of the new world, but that marginalizes the people who came to North America prior to 1492. A chart of suspected explorers who came to America prior to Columbus can be found here on Google Books.

On the whole, I think that we need to examine whether America should continue to celebrate and honor the actions of Christopher Columbus. Let’s Reconsider Columbus Day.

Reference

Loewen, J. W. (2007) Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Simon & Schuster.

“Post-racial” America is a farce

This is an assignment for my Culture in Counseling Class.

The National Federation of Republican Women held a meeting in Charleston, SC  and Glenn McConnell, a white American Republican State Senator from South Carolina posed in confederate army attire with two African American people dressed as slaves. His place of power within South Carolina juxtaposed with the African Americans’ place of service highlights America’s deception of progress. We’ve got a black man from Chicago in the White House, but there are still black people dressed as slaves serving white men and women in the south. Congratulations America, we’ve fixed racism!

An immediate sense of outrage bubbled to the forefront of my consciousness when I first saw this picture. I can’t believe that a national organization around one of our two major political parties thought it was appropriate to celebrate what they call “A Southern Experience” and what I call a celebration of slavery. As a society, we need to recognize and move past the notion that racism is no longer a problem. This photo is explicit evidence that this is not the “post-racial” society that some claim it is. Understanding that the struggle is on-going is the first step to continuing the conversation and working towards real progress.

Independence

While our history of 1776 should be celebrated and remembered, we should also remember the entirety of our history. The severe discrimination that many people have suffered at the hands of ignorance is just as important to our history as the meetings of the Continental Congress that shaped the ideas of the Declaration of Independence.

It is a day of celebration across the United States. Our entire country is thinking about the great things that occurred about 234 years ago and how the actions of those men shaped our country today. While there are many things within our country that we should cherish, appreciate, and celebrate,the founding fathers did not leave us with a perfect system or society. They left us with a framework and an ideal and we had to figure the rest out.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This is a beautiful sentiment and one that I imagine few people do not believe in. However, it is flawed. The men that are mentioned are white and own land. Women aren’t mentioned, and while this can be written off as a flaw of the english language, I think it is still telling.

Our republic was constructed to insulate the government from the unwashed, uneducated masses through elected representation and a electoral college rather than a direct popular election. The founding fathers wanted their freedom, but they wanted to maintain their status. As many of them were farmers, with slaves, preventing rights for the slaves extended their prosperity on the backs of an enslaved people.

There is no doubt that the founding fathers did great things. But, our system is not perfect and we should recognizethat. Slavery still existed until the 1860s. After that a system of discrimination was put into place to prevent all of the rights that were due to African Americans. It wasn’t until almost 100 years later in the civil rights movement that real progress was made past the post-slavery institutionalized discrimination.

Women could not vote until 1919 when the 19th amendment to the Constitution was passed. Even still, women were not welcome in the workplace and now there are still inequities in women’s pay.

While our history of 1776 should be celebrated and remembered, we should also remember the entirety of our history. The severe discrimination that many people have suffered at the hands of ignorance is just as important to our history as the meetings of the Continental Congress that shaped the ideas of the Declaration of Independence.