I think Zinn’s passage about the idea of a necessary sacrifice for human progress relating to European conquest of the Americas raises some really important questions about our history on this continent. Zinn’s passage describes the unethical actions taken by European countries to establish dominance in the New World. He also looks at conquest from a consequentialist perspective, pointing out that all of the death and destruction did not lead to any advancement for European countries. Was it a necessary sacrifice for human progress? Not really. But, would the United States and everything in our lives exist as it does today? No, which is why the real history of North American can be so difficult to acknowledge. The U.S. arguably owes Native Americans reparations for the destruction of their civilization, which, as Zinn notes, was not the uncivilized savagery described by the conquering Europeans.

This is the next key point made by Zinn. The Native Americans had a burgeoning civilization, with trade, industry, government, and the arts. With that in mind, European conquest was actually counterproductive to human progress. The Native Americans could have offered something to the world to advance human progress. Indeed, they made scores of advancements in agriculture, medicine, architecture, transportation, and more. Imagine if their civilization had existed for centuries in contact with the rest of the world. So many more developments could have occurred.

I, like I’m sure many others did as well, was not taught the extent of Columbus’s actions until much later in life. In fact, my school celebrated Columbus day with stories, parades, and games, which gave me very positive association with the man. When I got older, people told me the truth about Columbus and his actions, and it made me wonder why we teach such a warped history to kids. I understand the desire to protect children’s innocence, but is there a need to paint him as such a hero? I feel like there is definitely a way to introduce Columbus in a less celebratory way to kids so that when they do learn the full magnitude of his atrocities, they will not be shocked.

I think this distortion of history points towards a larger issue in our society, as Zinn focused on, that we manipulate information in order to convey certain messages. I think that people manipulate the message of Christopher Columbus because no one wants to embrace the idea of a murderer as the first explorer to find the land that we live on. I think it is similarly why we sugarcoat the story of Thanksgiving and settler-Native American relations in general. People are so proud of our origins as a nation that any evidence to taint that is reconfigured to make it “kid-friendly,” which as Zinn seems do argue, does more harm than good.

Hayter’s article reminded me of some of the things we had to read for my Justice & Civil Society class with Williamson. Just last week we read updates from the Office of Community Wealth Building in Richmond. One part of our reading went explained in-depth the history of segregation in Richmond and how the city and suburbs/counties were basically designed to keep black people poorer, contained, and socially lower than white people. I thought this recognition of systematic discrimination coming from a government office was a huge step in the right direction because we so rarely see that narrative in general, especially not from government officials or public figures. The part in the Office of Community Wealth Building’s report reminded me a lot of Hayter’s article, but it was just published in a more public way.

When someone mentions Christopher Columbus, my mind immediately takes me back to learning this rhyme from yes, a Mini Wheats commercial: “Christopher Columbus sailed the  ocean blue in 1492.” Aside from this quote, I remember pieces of history units in middle school that taught me Columbus discovered North America, and in a way, we have a reason to thank him for being here in the first place. What I, and most students today, never learn are the atrocities Columbus brought with him including enslavement, mass murder, and torture. After reading Zinn’s honest background on Columbus, I am shocked to say that probably 95% of the information given I have never heard. I didn’t even know Bartolomé de Las Casas was a person who ever existed. Aside from the horrible and gruesome acts Columbus led in North America, something I came to realize at the end of the reading was I was always taught to believe Columbus discovered unpopulated land that would now belong to Europeans. However, he instead disrupted a world that in some areas were “as densely populated as Europe itself.

Aside from learning the whole truth behind Columbus’ discovery of North America, another idea of Zinn’s that struck me was “the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress that is still with us.” As examples, Zinn mentions Hiroshima, Vietnam, and nuclear proliferation in general as ways that the United States has dealt with problems violently, but accepted it as needed. However, one act of inhumanity that the U.S. has never been able to back is the Holocaust. Another being the Rwandan Genocide. Or even the Cambodian Genocide. All of these events that have taken place in only the past century are frowned upon by Americans and taught to be intolerable, cruel acts against humanity. So how come in middle school I was taught that our use of nuclear warfare against Japan was needed and supported in order to help the U.S. win the war? Or how about the  Vietnam War, that I was told we technically won because we suffered less casualties? I am sure there are civilians worldwide who look at these violent events and disapprove of the United States’ actions. However, as citizens of this country, we have been taught to believe that if people claim it can help protect us, it is then alright to harm and murder members of other communities and populations.

There is a lot of American history that is left out of history classes at a young age. It is not until you reacher an older, “more acceptaptable” age that you learn about these topics. For many people this time never comes because they leave school before it occurs or the schools they are at choose to never address it. Both of these readings address parts of history that are either not touched in schools or just kind of glazed over.

In the reading by Zinn, I appreciate the way that he described that history should be taught from different perspectives. Learning about Andrew Jackson from the perspective of the Cherokee or the signing of the Constitution from the perspective of slaves would help people to understand better the plights that groups they do not identify with underwent throughout history. It would help to avoid only representing the history of the wealthy, white, ruling class in America. Last week in my Justice and Civil Society class we began discussing patriotism and its relations to sentimentality with history. One interesting point that was brought up was the balance between despair and sentimentality when looking at history. The author that we were reading for that class argued that people should address history with a sense of historical imagination. Essentially this means that people should separate the wisdom of past from the people themselves (separate the teachings of the Founding Fathers from the Founding Fathers themselves) and build on the wisdom while not idealizing those that created the wisdom. I think that this sort of approach combined with the approach for teaching history from different perspectives that Zinn laid out would help to avoid the romanticization and white-washing of history that happens in the current education system.

Being from Virginia and interested in voting rights, I really enjoyed Hayter’s article. The disenfranchisement of Black Americans from the political process is not something that has been skipped in my education, but has been glossed over. In high school, teachers used the the election of a majority black council in Richmond as an example of how Virginia as a whole reacted to desegregation and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. All the while, the ignored the fact that the next county over was formed by splitting off from my county because they wanted to continue segregation that the easiest way to do that was to ensure only white people lived in the county. The choice to include the information that made Virginia look good rather that that that was harmful for minority groups further proves the point made above of topics being glossed over when history is taught. Also, it further helps to prove Zinn’s idea that history should be taught from different perspectives. In this case, voting rights and desegregation movements should be taught from the perspective of Black Americans.

I just spent an hour writing my response to these readings and then wordpress kicked me out without saving my response, so now this response is going to be really rushed. 🙁

I had never been a fan of history, but always held the fact of “Columbus brought illness and took some Indians as slaves”. I didn’t (at all) ever grasp the gravity of wiping out half of an entire population within two years. The main thing that stuck out to me was how morality play a role for both Columbus and the Arawaks in different ways. For Columbus, his actions were always justified by religion and therefore (to him) morally right. For the Arawaks, it became morally better to murder their own children than to let them suffer by the hands of the Spaniards. I tried my best to read all of this through the lens of cultural relativism but I’m curious about each of these population’s relationship with morality compared to when the “discovery of the Americas” took place.

Also, I appreciated how Ziin challenged the readers by saying, “it is the job of thinking people…not to be on the side of the executioners”.

I am currently in Hayter’s LDST 101 course and his article made me think of his previous lecture on how women’s opposition to the constraints of typical housewife roles were, arguably, more successful at integrating this marginalized population into society than the civil rights movement for the African American population. The political party power struggle in Richmond is the perfect example of this. Overall, I found it interesting that even though the U.S. prides itself on the fact that we grant our citizens certain freedoms, we only historically care about protecting the rights of white men. Even with the little progress we’ve made in integrating our women and African American individuals, there are still legislative and corporate policies that work against them being full active members of society.

The readings emphasize how easy history can be misconstrued or taken out of context to convey certain messages. I know personally in school, I did not learn everything about Columbus and his actions once he reached the Americas. We were taught that he sailed from Spain to what he assumed was Asia, in order to achieve gold for his people. Although his actions were gruesome, I believe they should not be covered up in order to maintain his image. It is important to know all details of history as leaving out information creates a distortion of America’s past. To unacknowledge everything that occurred that led up to our modern society leads to ignorance of people’s actions in the past. As seen in our modern day society, we continue to celebrate Columbus Day and his ‘heroic’ actions but don’t seem to acknowledge 1). he did not make it to Asia as he assumed he did, and 2). brutally killed many natives of the land he visited for a reason I really don’t understand. There is much more to unpack in the actions of Columbus. There is valuable knowledge in knowing what was done as we try to understand our society’s history.

Having Dr.Hayter for my Justice and Civil Society class, I always appreciated his honest truth of history and acknowledgement of the systems that affected where society is today. Reading his article really reminded me that there is always a deeper look and meaning into history. Racial segregation in Richmond stems back from very long ago and is still prominent today in communities and government. It is unfortunate that these issues are still seen today, but it is important to understand them as it could help with the solution of moving towards a more inclusive and equal society.

First of all, Columbus is just the worst and I am glad that I am at least learning more and more about this now. My education growing up certainly did not depict the true Columbus and was definitely an example of exactly what Zinn discusses in his article. It is really disappointing to know that we have covered up, or masked, a lot of the atrocities that he committed. It was also revealing to read how exactly people are able to do this; on page 8, Zinn states that the way that the phrasing was constructed around Columbus and his actions left us to presume that “it should weigh very little in our final judgements.” Now that I know the reasoning behind “historian distortion” I wonder what other examples I may have been exposed to throughout my own education.

This reading really reminded me of a discussion we had in my 101 class about the University of Richmond’s history because it seems like we are doing the same thing. When I came to Richmond, I did not know about the “founders” of Richmond and the people like Ryland, Heilman, and more who were really not good people (owned slaves, blatantly racist, etc.) If we are condemning the fact that we mask information that then has certain implications for what is/is not important, then we should condemn the lack of openness and transparency about Richmond’s founders. Additionally, are we are doing the same thing by not publicizing the racism that occurred on campus this past semester? It is one thing to publish is but it is also another thing to “bury the public in a mass of other information (social media posts NOT about the issues or messages of comfort), which is to say to the reader (or public/campus in this case) with a certain infectious calm: yes, racism and racist acts took place but it should weigh little in our final judgements; it should affect very little what we do in the world” (Zinn 8). I see Zinn’s analysis to be very applicable to this example.

I think the Zinn chapter was a refreshing account of Columbus and the era of Spanish and English colonialism. Not refreshing in that the content was uplifting, but refreshing in its honesty on both sides. They don’t hide that the Aztecs sacrificed thousands of people, but also provide a complete account of the utter havoc and destruction that was brought in by Spanish conquerors. History is often framed in a way that makes excuses for the actions taken. It’s time that the goal of telling history is changed from excusing wrongdoings to owning up to mistakes and providing accounts of how events affected minorities and common people, not just how it served the wealthy often white elite.

Just as Spanish and English settlers in the 1400s did everything to consolidate power, the same thing was happening  in mid-20th century Richmond. White residents were doing everything in their power to maintain segregation and prevent black Richmonders from gaining any measurable political power, implementing everything from poll taxes to annexing a 97% white county in order to dilute the power of black votes. While the effects of the annexation were eventually resolved to a single-member district system that guarantees fair representation with majority-minority districts, that resolution took seven years and is currently trying to be repealed. Both of these articles are powerful examples of the lengths people, particularly white people, will go to to attain and maintain power, often on the basis of blatant discrimination and racism. This is clearly a pattern that has been in place for hundreds of years and we must continue to actively fight against it.

Both of these readings made me think about how frequently we oversimplify history. If you think about the version you hear about the stories in today’s readings they paint a much different picture than the reality of history. It is so much easier to teach children an oversimplified version of history than the whole story, which makes sense but becomes problematic down the line. A lot of people do not bother to reconsider the stories they have learned and educate themselves more later on. The Zinn reading, in particular, emphasized the fact that there are so many different ways to tell history and it becomes difficult to actually get simply the facts of what happened because every historian comes with a different perspective. When he said, “the historian’s distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or national or sexual” it really summed up the issue of different tellings of history. The details you choose to include or exclude do serve a purpose and represent a different ideology.

These readings also reminded me a lot of what we’ve been talking about in my Justice and Civil Society class. The other day in class we talked about patriotism and what that means in terms of accepting American history. There are a lot of negative points throughout American history, so much to the point that it is easy, at least for me, to look at all of it as negative. We talked about how in remembering history it is, from some people’s point of view, important to walk the line between cynicism and sentimentality, meaning it is important to remember not only all the bad parts and not only all the good parts. These readings really made me consider these ideas because they did bring up a lot of the bad parts of American history. It is easy for me to only think about the negatives, which I think you could argue are more important to consider and remember, and view every part of our history is tainted by a negative it is somehow connected to.

I was excited to read Howard Zinn’s chapter from A People’s History of the United States, “Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress,” as I was an avid reader of Zinn’s work while taking history classes in high school. We had also discussed the controversy of Columbus Day during Leadership and the Humanities, which I really enjoyed, as it is such an important topic. What many Americans do not realize are that Indigenous peoples continue to be among the most marginalized in our country after centuries of unwarranted violence and discrimination. Columbus, upon encountering the Arawak Indians, exhibited an extreme sense of paternalism as he made assumptions about a community he did not belong to. His report that the Arawak Indians “‘are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone…'” (Zinn, 3). This mentality was yet the beginning of the violence and mass murder the Arawaks faced– with 250,000 Indigenous people killed within two years (Zinn, 5). I was extremely upset, yet not surprised, to read about this violence fueled by Columbus and other Spaniards’ racism.

There is often debate surrounding historical events, such as Columbus Day and The First Thanksgiving, being taught to elementary and middle school students. We ask ethical questions like, “Is it ethical to tell children about a mass genocide?” and while I agree that discussing murder and bloodshed may be inappropriate, I don’t think Columbus should be represented as a heroic figure. It was not until taking AP United States History in high school that I was finally told the “truth” about the violence against Indigenous Nations or the “truth” of historical figures who were in fact white supremacists or slaveowners. I wish I hadn’t had to undergo that epiphany when I was 16-17 years old to understand the truth of figures such as Columbus. As I mentioned, I do not mean we should teach kindergartners about a mass genocide, but they should not be fooled into thinking Columbus deserves his own holiday. Educators should work up to the maturity levels of the students and build on concepts they learned in previous years. As Zinn delineates, the historian’s distortion occurred when Columbus was emphasized as a hero and the mass genocide that took place was downplayed (Zinn, 9). And we are prone to thinking through the lens of the leaders/heroes of the time, but as Zinn says, we must not fall prone to this way of thinking, and it is up to us to reverse that.

Why couldn’t have it been Indigenous People’s Day in the first place?