I actually really enjoyed the Zinn reading, in that I think the chapter of that book is one everyone should read. I didn’t start learning how bad of a person Columbus was until high school, and even then all I knew was that he committed mass genocide on the native peoples. Reading a detailed account of what actually happened made me even more passionate about ending the glorification of Columbus. He wasn’t a good person, and Indigenous People’s Day should be celebrated instead of Columbus Day.

I was very struck by the way Zinn commented on how we commonly gloss over historical figures’ laws by focusing on the good things they did instead of the bad. I think the phrase “history was written by the victors” very much applies here, because I realize that I only started learning the “true” history of the world within the last five years. Historical figures that I’ve looked up to in the past have turned out to be pretty problematic. For example, I’ve always admired John Muir for his findings as a naturalist and as an early advocate for the preservation of wilderness, but it turns out he was also incredibly racist. Humans love to put things into boxes, which I think comes from our need to see things as black or white. We don’t do well with gray area. People like Columbus and Cortés undoubtedly made important discoveries, but they also committed horrible acts. I think it’s important to acknowledge that they did further human expansion, but to not give them too much credit as morally good heroes, because their discoveries did lead to the erasure of other cultures.