The recent name change of The Bahamas traditional October 12th Discovery Day Holiday to Heroes Day has brought out the worst in many of us on Facebook and blog threads.
People have called for the removal of the Christopher Columbus Statue from the steps of Government House and Queen Victoria's Statue from Parliament Square. Others have called for the removal of text books about Columbus from the schools because of his nasty deeds to the Aboriginal people of these islands.
Some of the comments make it clear that world history is not taught in our schools.
Taking it one step further, a friend and I have been asking young people if they knew the British were enslaved to the Romans for about 350 years with deeds as unspeakable as those with the African slave trade. The answer is always "no, I never heard that before". Read more (pdf) here…
Attempting to rewrite/erase history is a huge mistake. As fellow blogger S3S noted in an exchange about this subject:
"Historical revisionism serves no long term purpose. We cannot undo what has past, so we can consider, debate and ruminate over it but should not change it, whether or not we agree. Our future generations will be the poorer for it.
"Despite the bad treatment by the Romans, the Brits revel in that part of their history and do all to protect whatever they can uncover from that period (like last week, when the multi-billion pound Cross Rail project was temporarily put on hold because while tunnelling under Central London, they came across a mass Roman burial ground …) Read more here…
"People with no vision/foresight of how the revisions they make to history books, history courses, school curricula, etc would impact future generations. Consequently, they make decisions because they do not understand the consequences of those decisions.
But back to Discovery Day and Columbus.
In 1989 Dr. Cleveland W. Eneas Sr. summed it up for me with his speech to the Rotary Club of East Nassau entitled Discovery Day:
"Thus he (Columbus) must be credited with opening up the way for one of the worst periods in the history of man's inhumanity to man – human slavery in the West Indies and the Americas. The dastardly "middle passage" followed the route of Columbus, and turned out to be the watery grave of many an African."
"Nevertheless, in the face of all this, the results of his ventures, though bad for some, were good for the many. In 1992, this new world would have been included on the map of the globe for 500 years. In those five centuries, the thinking, the beliefs, and the demeanour of the earth have changed enormously, and the question is: is the globe any better off for it? I dare say that there is not one of you who will not agree that it is better. I am certain that it is better in The Bahamas and for many reasons. In spite of the fact that the Spaniards had no hand in making it better, we still have cause to celebrate."
(Mrs. Erica Wells, Editor at The Nassau Guardian kindly provided a copy of Dr. Eneas speech and you can download a pdf of it it here…)
I agree and think maybe the new "Majority Rule Day" holiday recently added to the calendar should have been named Heroes Day and Discovery Day should remain. It is a vital part of our history and links nations all over the world.
Our history should not be "cleansed" because we do not like injustices as the Russians and Chinese have allegedly done? Should we erase Atlantic Slave Trade from our books because of the horror? How about the Holocaust? Of course not! These serve as a reminders of deeds that should never be repeated. Many individual freedoms have been lost the world over by trying to erase parts of history.
And as Dr. Cleve pointed out, maybe on net we're better off as a result of Columbus finding our shores even though, as he said, "Columbus goes down in the records as our first European tourist, who left home on borrowed money, not knowing exactly where he was going, and didn't know where he was when he got there, and ended up in goal when he got back home…"
So on Heroes Day, I will still celebrate Columbus landfall because of its importance to our past, and I will honour some of my Bahamian heroes like Dr. Cleve Eneas Sr., Jackson Burnside and Patrick Rahming.
To add an obvious point, revising history is tantamount to ‘playing God’: since revisionists cannot ‘make the future’, they try to ‘undo the past’.
Revisionism is “conducted to influence a target’s ideology and/or politics for a particular purpose” [1] so is a position based in politics and ignorance first and foremost and underpinned by a false sense of power (as in actions taken by the Chinese, French, Russian Governments over recent history). Luckily, many countries have passed laws to stop this ‘negationism’; we should consider such a law in The Bahamas.
These people have to be exposed for who they really are: despots who disguise themselves as ‘do-gooders’!
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism_(negationism)
Well said.
Those who do know know their past have no point of reference and thus no direction for their future
“How many people in the Bahamas would even be alive today if Columbus had not “discovered” America, if European scientific know-how over the centuries had not come with the Europeans, including “Western” medicine and medical practices over the last 500 years? What would be the standard of living of any who might now live in the Bahamas if, over the centuries improvements in the European conceptions of rule of law, private property, individual freedom and enterprise had not, also, come with the colonial presence? Indeed, if the Western ideas of political liberty, self- determination, and democracy and representative government had not, also, been “imported” as an historical consequence of Columbus discovering America, what type of political system would the Bahamas have today? The illusion exists that we would or could have all that we have and take for granted even if the historical events — both “good” and “bad” — that created the present had never happened. It does not work that way.”
Should the U.S. also celebrate a “Majority Rule Day”?
Think about it.
Also, those who do not know History are condemned to making the same mistakes