Donald Trump reportedly intends to install a statue of Christopher Columbus in front of the White House to honor racism and right-wing ignorance in yet another desecration of federal and public grounds in our nation’s capital.
According to the Washington Post, sources say Trump plans to erect the statue of Columbus outside the White House. The statue is a reconstruction of the statue that protesters toppled and dumped into Baltimore harbor in 2020 in the midst of nationwide protests after the killing of George Floyd by police.
The Columbus statue was not the only racist monument toppled that year, as several Confederate statues were also removed after crushing public demand. Now, Trump wants to install a replica of that very Columbus statue outside the White House, a plan that is already drawing ridicule.
Indeed, Columbus NEVER set foot on any of what would become the United States. Native Americans were already here, and the Norse (Vikings) had sailed to North America 500 years before Columbus ever thought about a boat. Columbus landed in what is today the Bahamas, Jamaica, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
He also set in motion a genocide of native peoples by introducing disease, slavery, and cruelty so egregious that he ended up in a Spanish jail for nearly two months. In fact, Columbus’s legacy had been largely reduced to more of a mere footnote in history until the early 1800s when American leaders decided to use Columbus as a way to declare superiority over Native Americans, as depicted in a statue of Columbus that once stood at the US Capitol until 1958.
While Trump supporters insist that their motives are not racist, it’s nearly impossible to believe because Columbus has long been used as a symbol of white superiority over people of color, especially indigenous populations. Trump is not merely installing a statue. He’s declaring that white supremacy is what America is all about.
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