Those who crucify Columbus ignore his historical context

Opinions Column by Paul Lubbers, 10/11/95 from the Daily Alumni

As anyone who was in the vicinity of the quad Monday can tell you, Columbus Day has once again visited the University campus. This day, this much maligned holiday, has ceased to become a day of admiration and of colorful, grade school bulletin boards for the explorer. Instead, it has become a day of heated racial protest on this campus as well as throughout the nation. Columbus Day has become "Crucify Columbus Day," a day to point the highbrowed, hindsighted finger of blame for the world's racial problems on the shoulders of one man. Columbus, who in my grade school memories was seen as a brilliant hero, has now become perhaps one of the greatest historical villains the world has ever seen.

I, along with many others on this campus, find this change quite disturbing. This recent trend toward the persecution of Columbus sets the precedent for something that nauseates anyone interested in objective history. By allowing the recent explosion of obtrusive political correctness to take control of the way we view Columbus, we are holding a 15th Century man accountable to 20th Century interpretations of morality.

Columbus lived from the years 1451-1506 A.D. That means he died a good 450 years before the civil rights movement and nearly 500 years prior to the political correctness revolution. Columbus is, as are all men and women of world history, a product of his respective time and thus a product of a value structure and moral framework appropriate to the time that he lived in.

This is not to say that I wholeheartedly approve of Columbus' actions and beliefs. While the man was indeed a brilliant navigator, he was a monomaniac, and a number of his calculations and theories of geography were also severely flawed. Also, he did indeed hold beliefs that would today, in the modern perspective, be seen as nothing other than completely racist.

However, before we allow a few individuals, such as the Columbus Day protesters in Monday's demonstration, to totally replace our history textbooks' image of Columbus with that of a tyrannical racist, we need to remember the context of Columbus' life. This context, the reality of early modern Europe during the 15th century, must be understood before any real discussion of Columbus' values can take place. This means Columbus saw the world the way he did because that is the way the world of his time socialized him.

However, some might ask, "Well Paul, just because he lived 500 years ago, does that make his beliefs OK?" As anyone with a brain would respond (and I'm sure this excludes the majority of the Columbus Day protesters), and after listening to Monday's Columbus Day Quad debates, the answer is a resounding "no."

I would hate to think there is anyone on this planet who does not agree that humankind has essentially "grown up" over the past 500 years. Along with numerous advances in technology and medicine, our view of equality has advanced as well. The population of 15th Century Europe was a superstitious, and for the most part, racially ignorant lot. Christopher Columbus came of age in a world that did not have all of the advantages, both technological and intellectual, of the contemporary age. To him, reality was defined by what he saw around him, and around him at the timethe notion of racial equality was practically non-existent.

I am in no way discounting the importance of race in interpreting history. I, as a lover of history, am glad to see such widespread attempts at intellectual historical discourse on this campus, misguided though it might be. Race is an important lens through which the informed student cansuccessfully interpret many aspects of history.

However, in Columbus's case, the role of racial interpretation of history is severely misunderstood by those who attempt to be the strongest advocates of it. Once racial interpretation becomes moral as well, the objective lens of history is fogged and a true understanding of the past is impossible.

You see, moral judgments, or as in the case of Columbus, moral judgments based on the notion of racial equality, are limited to debate based on the era from which they originate. The epistemological frameworks by which one makes judgments on ideas such as race are constantly being modified and shaped by the world around them. Thus, Columbus formulated his beliefs on race solely on the sort of values that he saw other 15th Century Europeans around him espousing. Therefore, it is paramount that we remember this as we look with a 20th Century mind at a 500-year-old individual. Anything more than that is unfair not only to Columbus' legacy, but to history as a whole.

So what does all of this mean for Mr. Columbus and his role in our history books and on our calendars? It means that while we do indeed need to rethink the notion of Columbus as an outright hero and "discoverer" of a continent that was already inhabited, we cannot persecute the man for simply being a product of his own time. Columbus did make many great contributions to Europeans' world knowledge at the time. He sailed the seas with misguided bravery and a contempt for a great many people. However, the most important fact is that he did all of this 500 years ago.

Have Questions or Comments? email Jay Edwards

Back to Class Page