Bill O'Reilly: The truth about Christopher Columbus

 

[VIDEO] I breezed by yet another Columbus Day holiday and that's because I'm grown and no longer in school that recognizes that holiday. Holidays were the things I looked forward to in school although once you go to college you might go to a school that doesn't recognize Columbus Day as a holiday.

In the video above Bill O'Reilly goes over the history of Christopher Columbus and his exploration of the New World. It's a history that I took for granted and certainly finds itself under attack today under the guise of racial & social justice.

Last year in Chicago there was dramatic footage of an assault against police on a Columbus statue located in a Chicago park on Roosevelt Road near Soldier Field. The statue itself was later removed but it was part of a larger movement around America removing statues that a fringe group considered insensitive or offensive. It started with Confederate statues and then other American icons such as Presidents or even Columbus for example.

Let's be clear here, I don't believe Columbus was the first European to discover America. In fact when he landed in a part of the Bahamas he was actually trying to get to Asia. He was trying to go west as opposed to what other European sailors did which is travel along the west coast of Africa and then head east into Asia. I do believe Columbus' exploration of the New World ultimately did lead to colonization of the Western Hemisphere and unfortunately that meant friction between the native peoples of this part of the world.

While I didn't really know this back when I was in school, Columbus is actually an icon for Italian Americans. Columbus though he embarked on his expedition under the flag of Spain, he is actually of Italian descent.

Also for the holiday I have no issue with referring to Columbus Day as Indigenous People Day. Here in Chicago there still was a Columbus Day Parade. However the history of Columbus I do believe is still important and shouldn't just be simplified to how Columbus was horrible to the various native peoples he encountered. This is something we should research ourselves, the materials are out there to consumer, and then we can come to our conclusions as far as what happened when Columbus' expedition first met the Carib tribe in the Bahamas.