Columbus Day vs. Indigenous Peoples' Day

It is easy to see why Columbus is considered a fool and a scoundrel. He miscalculated the distance from Europe to Asia. He brought new diseases to the Americas, or at least led the way so others could spread those diseases. After he arrived, he murdered and plundered, or at least led the way so others could do the murdering and plundering.

 

If he had not discovered America someone else would have done so later, likely with the same results. The only difference would be in the names of some streets and cities. It has become very popular to criticize figures from the past by applying today’s knowledge, values and standards of behavior, but apparently that’s where we are. 

 

However, if we are going to hold Columbus accountable, it’s only fair to take a closer look at the suggested alternative holiday name and hold those people to similar standards.

 

Some facts come from this publication from the University of Arizona. “Indigenous populations engaged in warfare and ritual violence long before European contact.” They were not the innocent, peace-loving people of recent depictions.

Another source continues, “Contemporary accounts from both European and Indigenous sources reveal that the pre-Columbian world was a place where slavery, trafficking, sexual exploitation, oppression, and even genocide was commonplace prior to any European contact.”

A Harvard University site includes a history of slavery by indigenous people. “Slavery existed in North America long before the first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619. For centuries, from the pre-Columbian era through the 1840s, Native Americans took prisoners of war and killed, adopted, or enslaved them.

 

After the arrival of European settlers, such behavior continued. “Comanche were specialists in torture, they were also the most ferocious and successful warriors — indeed, they became known as ‘Lords of the Plains’.” They are described as “imperialist and genocidal” relative to both neighboring tribes and white settlers. “When they first migrated to the great plains of the American South in the late 18th century from the Rocky Mountains, not only did they achieve dominance over the tribes there, they almost exterminated the Apaches.”

 

The Smithsonian Magazine tells of the practice of black slavery by the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole tribes. “The Five Civilized Tribes were deeply committed to slavery, established their own racialized black codes, immediately reestablished slavery when they arrived in Indian territory [after forced resettlement], rebuilt their nations with slave labor, crushed slave rebellions, and enthusiastically sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War.” One native chief in Mississippi owned a plantation of “15,000 acres” and had “400 enslaved Africans under his dominion.”

 

Can we hold all Native Americans responsible for the brutality and mistakes of a very few and cancel their holiday, when most of them were just trying to live their lives as best as they could? That doesn’t seem fair, but it’s exactly the same treatment the police have been getting lately. Not to do so smacks of selective outrage.

 

As a solution we might take page from the British calendar and change the name to October Bank Holiday – except don’t get me started on those evil bankers!

Consider The Source

When I was in high school, our English (language arts?) teacher taught us to challenge everything we read.  See who the author is.  Does he or she have the expertise required?  Is there a hidden agenda or built-in bias?  How does this come across in the story, book or report?

Now here is a story that hit the news earlier in the week.  I picked it up from Yahoo News, but it also appeared in Forbes, the AP and several other outlets.  “Many Google employees have expressed outrage over a document in which a senior Google engineer reportedly claims that biological gender differences make women less effective programmers and argues that the company should not actively work to improve diversity in staffing.”

Wait a minute!  This guy is a computer engineer.  Do we expect him to know anything about biological gender differences?  I certainly don’t.  In fact, the statement shows that he is somewhat ignorant on the subject.  Later in the article it states: “There is no evidence that women are inherently less skilled coders than men.” Additionally, about a year ago the Guardian published the results of a study showing that a peer review of work “approved code written by women at a higher rate than code written by men, but only if the gender was not disclosed.” 

(This is the same kind of gender bias that infected many symphony orchestras until they started holding auditions behind a screen.  It also shows up when we hear of a female visual artist after being  overlooked for many years finally getting recognition.  What were the critics looking at instead of the pictures?  The problem has clearly not been confined to Silicon Valley.)

The conclusion in this case:  He doesn’t know what he is talking about.  He has no particular expertise in the field.  This is easy – consider the source.  The leaders of the company should take him aside and require behavior that does not reflect this error in judgment or if they didn’t think that was possible, fire him.  No outrage necessary.  Problem solved.  (As it turned out, he was fired.)

But also consider this next paragraph of the story.  “The document is a personal statement not sanctioned in any way by the company, but has been circulating widely within Google.”  Of course it’s been widely circulated.  You can’t be outraged without sharing your outrage with as many other people as possible.  That’s no fun.  And the media likes nothing better than a case of outrage to feature in headlines to help spread the outrage around.  This becomes not a Google issue to deal with, but another national crisis.

In America, the truth is no longer something sought out and discovered.  The truth is voted upon – by voice vote, usually shouting.  If you are outraged, you tweet or post on Facebook or start a petition.  The point is to get likes and shares and signatures and others shouting about it.  Spread the outrage!  That’s how you win for your point of view.  It’s not a matter of a simple counterargument with better facts.  Especially when there are no legitimate facts to support a particular point of view, outrage becomes the only avenue.  Unfortunately it has become a habit, even among those who, as in this case, are clearly in the right and have the facts on their side.

Maybe we need a little less outrage, which can easily turn into bullying to cut off all debate, and more actual conversation.  Maybe we need Americans to follow the consider-the-source rule and not cling to the pronouncements of every actor, musician, politician or scientist with a different field of specialization on subjects they are not in the least bit qualified to represent, for example, economics, climate, nutrition and vaccinations.  Sure, they have a right to express opinions, but the fact that their opinion is no more valid than almost anyone else’s too often goes unchallenged.

Outrage

Our freedom of speech is threatened not by brutal government policies but by common outrage.  Outrage replaces civil discourse in any number of areas.

Years ago Lawrence Summers as president of Harvard expressed the possibility that young men were naturally more gifted in STEM subjects than young women.  According to the Harvard newspaper, he said that underrepresentation of women in sciences “may stem in part from ‘innate’ differences between men and women, although two Harvard professors who heard the speech said the remarks have been taken out of context in an ensuing national media frenzy.”  In science this is known as a hypothesis, a guess at reality that should be tested before it’s accepted as true.  Set up an experiment, do a survey or otherwise look into it to see if the facts support it.  Was this the way his statement was treated? – Of course not.  Instead the women’s rights groups went ballistic, demanding an apology, demanding his resignation, setting off a “media frenzy”, all due to his expressing a thought that was “taken out of context”, easily refuted logically and did not necessarily reflect a personal opinion.  Using the weapon of outrage, his critics managed to shut him up, forcing him to apologize and quite possibly affecting his later career.

This came to mind as I read about a more recent example.  An AP story tells of University of Iowa President Sally Mason who has taken serious steps to reduce violence on campus.  She hired “an administrator to coordinate help for victims and mandated prevention training for employees.”  Years ago she even personally experienced an incident as an undergraduate.  “Yet one statement she made last month - that ending sexual assault was probably unrealistic ‘just given human nature and that's unfortunate’ - ignited a firestorm.”  Is this a woman who hates women, or could she merely have been expressing some degree of frustration with the enormous job of trying to guarantee everyone’s safety on campus?  No time to find out.  Outrage erupted with accusations of hurtful speech and insensitivity, causing uproars among activist groups “from California to Massachusetts.”  Critics even went so far as to complain that the university “put too much focus on the victims by warning women not to walk alone or to binge drink – and not enough on perpetrators.”  Is that any more insensitive or uncaring than reminding people not to leave their cars running in the driveway or to lock their doors when leaving the house because there are bad guys out there?  Of course she too was forced to apologize.

It’s not only women’s groups who use this tactic.  Minorities, religious groups, animal rights activists and many others use it to squelch conversation, to put their opponents on the defensive, to win an argument without presenting a counterargument.  As a result things are never resolved and others feel intimidated to express an opinion or make a controversial hypothesis for fear of getting the same treatment.  Firestorms and media frenzies don’t solve problems; they bury them.

Bullying and the Easter Bunny

I found this essay on the website bullies2buddies.com.  It discusses bullying in detail and argues persuasively that anti-bullying legislation is not effective because a government can’t force moral behavior on its citizens; and that our children learn from our behavior about both sides of the relationship, by our response to bullying and by the tacit endorsement of victimhood within our society.  We need to teach, by example, both how to be less offending toward each other and how to be less vulnerable to offensive behavior.  The essay concludes:  “If we are to have any chance of achieving a meaningful reduction in bullying, there is one fact we all need to recognize: There is only one person in the world who can get people to treat you well. And that person is you.”

This is a clear call for increased responsibility.  A bullying interaction requires two parties.  While we try to discourage the bully by education, policies and punishment – so far not very successfully, what role models do we provide for the target of the bully? There is a lot of evidence that victimhood has become more acceptable, even popular in recent years.

 It’s usually easier to react with outrage or offense rather than with a reasoned response.  I have been keeping a folder labeled “Outrage” where I collect examples of such behavior.   This ranges all the way from sexual harassment laws that judge purely on the basis of the offended party’s feelings, disregarding the intent of the offender, to Super Bowl halftime shows that shock viewers into protest.  People in public positions “walk on eggshells” to avoid giving offense.  One opinion columnist was taken to task for using the expression “man up” in an article, accused of insulting a whole gender.  Last year a McDonalds ad was accused of being insensitive to pit bulls by using the simile of petting a stray pit bull to indicate danger.  An anti-Obama political statement on a billboard in Elkhart, IN earned the wrath of 25 people who claimed to be offended.  Iowa passed a law protecting white deer, not for biological reasons, but because of an uproar in the 1980s when a hunter shot one during hunting season.  A man protested the display of a Chinese flag next to an American flag outside a Chinese company’s operation in the Midwest (providing jobs for Americans).  Finally, the Easter bunny, in fact any reference to Easter, has been banned from at least one elementary school to “respect and honor everyone’s differences” and in response to some parents' concerns.

Reasons to be upset or offended seem endless, but create a serious problem by inhibiting the free exchange of ideas and opinions.  This is the main problem with political correctness.  There are instances of college professors expressing personal opinions on Muslims and homosexuals leading to student protests and calls for their resignation.  In 2005 at Harvard, Lawrence Summers, who later served as an advisor in the Obama administration, expressed an opinion that men were better than women in math and science due in part to “innate differences” between the sexes.  This was met, not with contrary evidence or reasoned discussion, but with protests and demands for his resignation.  Even if these people are dead wrong, attempts to invalidate their arguments are overwhelmed by the need to silence them through personal attacks.  Outrage trumps reasoned disagreement every time.

Indeed bullying is a problem we hear about nearly every day.  Some call it epidemic.  Is it really worse than ever because of the internet and smart phones, or can at least part of the increase in reported incidents be attributed to the fact that Americans are less inclined to take care of themselves, turning to authorities and policies to protect them from hurt feelings?  Our behaviors as a society popularize and glorify the ability to claim victimhood, to claim offense and demand an apology.  Isn’t it reasonable to assume that this widespread modeling of victimhood and encouraging people to define themselves as victims undermine their ability to cope with adversity and make them more sensitive to slights and insults, actually exacerbating the problem?

Now some people may think it is insensitive even to raise the notion that bullying is a two-way street and that some responsibility must lie in the reaction of the target to the bully.  I hope such people would take the time to develop and defend a well-reasoned counter-argument rather than use their outrage and offense to suppress an uncomfortable idea by attacking the messenger.

Truly Magic Buttons

Seriously, I want to tell you about magic buttons.  This may come as a shock to faithful readers who know that when faced with any product representing itself as magic, I usually respond with, “Apply some critical thinking!”  But this is different.  The magic buttons I refer to are the ones that turn off or change stations on your radio or television.  The fact that there are such buttons should come as no surprise, but when I see how many people complain about being "offended" by something they heard or saw, I don’t think these buttons are used enough.

What brought this to mind is the latest minor controversy involving the Doonesbury comic strip commenting on Texas abortion sonogram debate (and subsequent letters to the editor).  This is not the first time Doonesbury has tackled controversial subjects, and I know of one newspaper that thought it appropriate to move the strip to the editorial page long ago.  Doonesbury appears in my local newspaper, although I seldom read it.  I don’t have strong feelings about this particular subject, but the humor of Doonesbury just does not appeal to me, and I have better things to do with my time.  There are other columns, as well as television and radio shows that fall into the same category.  There’s no button on the newspaper, but no one is forcing me to read everything, so I pick and choose, making my own decision.  Smart media executives eventually survey readers to find out what is popular and adjust accordingly.  (For example, here's an article mentioning Oprah's use of survey information.)  If I’m in the minority, which I often am, no adjustments will be made and I will just keep managing my own exposure using the off and channel-change buttons.  I’ll choose to be discriminating rather than offended.

I take this course because I feel strongly about the First Amendment.  All are free to express beliefs or state opinions no matter how outrageous.  If people don’t agree they can tune them out or turn them off – or they can make calm, rational counterarguments.  Eventually the worst will lose their support and platform.  I’m patient.  I can wait.  (Impatience is a great enemy of perspective.)

What I can’t understand are those self-righteous types who make a big fuss and demand apologies, boycotts and retribution.  Sometimes I agree with their point of view, sometimes I don’t; but I fail to see what gives them the right to dictate my choices based on their taste or morals.  If something disturbs or offends them, let them use their magic buttons.  If they think certain things are not appropriate for their children, let them get more involved in their children’s lives. 

By the way, another magic button is the mute button on the TV remote.  Used during commercials, it provides some nice quiet time, time to relax or converse with your family, and just ignore all the sales pitches.  I use it frequently and recommend it.