I thought that the Zinn reading was extremely interesting. I have enjoyed learning about how history that we learn in middle school is almost never what actually occurred in my 101 class and again with this reading. I had always known to some degree that Columbus was not good to the native people and brought diseases to the new world, but I did not know the extent or the back story to his actions. I thought that it was so interesting to learn that Columbus completely over exaggerated what he had found to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella so that they could give him a bigger fleet for his next journey. Not that his actions are justifiable at all, I this that it is fascinating that Columbus was put under so much pressure to please the king and that is why \u201che committed irreparable crimes against the Indians\u201d (6). I also thought that it was not surprising how Columbus and his team were only concerned with the riches and honor that they could bring back to Spain and did not think about the long-term consequences at all.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This reading made me think about a documentary I recently had to watch for my justice class called \u201cHarvest of Empire\u201d. This documentary was about how the US interfered with South American countries only because it would help our economy or bring money into businesses that we supported. The documentary highlights how the US did not care at all about what they were doing to the nation\u2019s governments would impact the native people living there. I thought that there were a lot of connections between the documentary and the Zinn reading because they both deal with looking at people who will do just to preserve and gain power and riches. I also saw so many similarities in the way that there was complete disregard for the native people of the nations that the US and Columbus were invading. This really makes me wonder why we still celebrate Columbus Day in the US when there is so much about how he was actually an awful person. Also, this makes me think about how every American grows up with a very idealistic vision of US history but in reality it is mainly fake to make the US look much better than it actually is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I thought that the Zinn reading was extremely interesting. I have enjoyed learning about how history that we learn in middle school is almost never what actually occurred in my 101 class and again with this reading. I had always known to some degree that Columbus was not good to the native people and brought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4553,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4553"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}