Columbus Belongs Not Only to History

“And one example of this—among others—is how prominently he features in a particular tradition of philosophy: that of philosophical pessimism.”

On the evening of Tuesday, June 9th, a statue of the Italian-born explorer Christopher Columbus was torn down from its pedestal in Richmond, Virginia’s Byrd Park by approximately 200 demonstrators. The statue was then draped in an American flag and set on fire. When the point had been proven with the burning, the statue was dragged to a nearby pond and thrown into the water, in a manner strikingly similar to how a statue of Edward Colston had been disposed of into Bristol Harbor two days prior.

The following day, another statue depicting Columbus was toppled outside of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul. After it violently struck the ground, breaking the pedestal, the mob gathered spit upon it. And it was much of the same for statues of Columbus across the country, from Boston to Houston to Wilmington, Delaware to Detroit. And, this past weekend, Columbus State, a community college in Ohio, announced its intention to re-examine its longstanding practice of honoring its namesake. These recent events appear to be the culmination of what has been a persistent push to discontinue honoring Columbus on the grounds that he represents colonialism, the subjugation of the indigenous peoples of the Americans, and, in the words of Camden, New Jersey mayor Frank Moran, is an “outdated symbo[l] of racial division and injustices.”

In defense of Columbus, various politicians, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, have opposed removing statues of Columbus, arguing that the explorer has become a point of pride for Italian-Americans. This is similar to a point also voiced by Allison Schuster, who, writing at The Federalist, deplored the destruction of the Columbus statue in St. Paul by tracing its history as a symbol of Italian-American pride, as well as the life story of its sculptor Carlo Brioschi. (For Brioschi, in Schuster’s telling, the statue was representative of the acceptance of Italian-Americans in the Twin Cities region.) All the while, other critics of the removal of statues of Columbus have cited similar arguments to those against toppling any historical monument, suggesting that Columbus, like all of us, was a product of his time and, besides, tampering with history is a dangerous business anyways.