Christopher Columbus Research Paper

“In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” I repeated back to my first grade teacher. She beamed with delight at her array of tiny first graders. Second grade, Christopher Columbus hats decorate our heads. Third grade, week long curriculum honoring the man who founded America. Fourth grade, learning from Eurocentric history textbooks who decorated the man’s accomplishments and perseverance.

Middle school—my teacher dared to tell us the truth. All the Christopher Columbus holidays I have celebrated were lies, I have celebrated this man for reasons I had no true knowledge of. The array of students alongside me were taught and educated by a system serving the white man, knowing no better.

I wouldn’t be where I am today if Christopher Columbus did not accidentally stumble across America due to his failure to find the route to India. Neither would the faces of vast ethnicities that decorate the hallways of
If they had not competed with each other to colonize the world, the world would not be in the shambles of systematic oppression. If the white man did not set off to Asia for spices, china, perfume and the silk of Asia, if the white man did not seek to minister their religion onto others, if the white man did not seek free labor from Africa, if the white man did not rape the indigenous people of Southern America the world would not be run by the white man. The effect of the white man’s venture into another people’s home still lingers today. I hear it when my family yells at me for not being tall, skinny, or fair skinned. I see it in the school to prison pipeline of brown people. I smell it in the mixture of aromas from my motherland in the bustling city of Worcester, Massachusetts. I feel it with each step of concrete I take in the city. I taste it when I take a bite into immigrant mother’s attempt at