A statue of Christopher Columbus has been put on the grounds of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. A news report notes that “The statue is a replica of one that was tossed into Baltimore’s harbor in 2020 during Trump’s first term at a time of nationwide protests against institutional racism. Trump endorses a traditional view of Columbus as a leader of the 1492 mission seen as the unofficial beginning of European colonization in the Americas and the development of the modern economic and political order. But in recent years, Columbus also has been recognized as a primary example of Western Europe’s conquest of the New World, its resources and its native people.”
“In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero, and President Trump will ensure he’s honored as such for generations to come,” the White House announced.
“We are delighted the statue has found a place where it can peacefully shine and be protected,” said John Pica, president of Italian American Organizations United.
The coming to the New World of Spanish colonists saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people in Mexico who would otherwise have been killed in human sacrifices. The Aztec Empire practiced human sacrifice on a large scale, with tens of thousands of victims annually. Many indigenous Mexican groups, such as the Tlaxcalans, joined the Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortés because they detested Aztec rule, which included the forced tribute of victims for sacrifice.
Many statues of historical figures were removed in 2020-2021 and the tumult that followed the death of George Floyd.
BLM protesters tore down the statue of Ulysses S. Grant in San Francisco on Juneteenth in 2021. Grant is the general who did the most to defeat the Confederacy in the Civil War. Later, as president of the United States, he appointed black people and Native Americans to office and tried to protect blacks against racist violence in the South, even though keeping federal troops in the South to protect blacks was costly and unpopular in the North. Grant’s contributions to black freedom were so great that he was celebrated by the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. “To him, more than to any other man, the Negro owes his enfranchisement,” Douglass said. Douglass eulogized Grant as “a man too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point. In him the Negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior.”
The reason for tearing down his statue was that he once briefly owned a slave that he had been given. But he voluntarily freed that slave in 1859, before the Civil War, and long before slavery was abolished.
Grant’s statue was not alone in being torn down. As Newsweek noted, “The statues of St. Junipero Serra, the first saint of the Roman Catholic Church to be canonized in the U.S., and Francis Scott Key, the author of the lyrics to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ were also torn down at the park on the same day.”
Police in that progressive city allowed it to happen: “Nearly 400 protesters were reported at the scene around 8:30 p.m. local time, according to police, who did not engage with the demonstrators. No arrests were made, NBC Bay Area reported.”
Earlier, a George Washington statue in progressive Portland was toppled, and covered with a burning U.S. flag. George Washington held slaves, but freed them in his will. Months later, authorities in Portland declined to reinstall the statute, saying it caused “harm” to those offended by it.
By contrast, BLM protesters have left alone the Seattle statue of Soviet Communist dictator Lenin, who relied on slave labor and forced labor on a vast scale.
