This is a 2 part essay about Howard Zinn and Robert Royal Commenting on each others opinions about Christopher Columbus and the Arawak Nation

Essay by idunno24601High School, 10th gradeA-, April 2004

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Zinn Essay

Period 3 US History AP

A nation founded on the slaughter of innocent people will never admit what they did was wrong. Most of them will not even acknowledge that such events ever took place. They will even go as far as to tell their children that the murderous tyrants of old were heroes and how they brought peace and prosperity. They will preach of how a nation of uneducated savages was given the gift of Christianity and how the divine light lead them to become people of culture. This nation is America. These people were the Arawak, Iroquois, Cherokee, Powhatan, Pequot, and Wampanoag just to name a few. The tyrants were Spanish explorers, English settlers, and the American people. And very few individuals personify the "American idealist" as much as Robert Royal.

"In recent years, of course, Columbus' standing as a hero has come under severe assault.

He and the culture he represented have been castigated for initiating the modern cultural dominance of Europe and every subsequent world evil: colonialism, slavery, cultural imperialism, environmental damage, and religious bigotry. There is a kernel of truth in these charges, but obviously to equate a single individual for a complex entity like a culture with what are currently being judged to be the negative dimensions of the emergence of an interconnected human world is to great a historical injustice to both individuals and ideas."

These words, written by Robert Royal, are both lies and propaganda. Columbus is to blame for bigotry, genocide, and a good deal of imperialism; claiming that he caused slavery, environmental damage, and colonialism is just a way of making the truth sound implausible. The implication that these charges were ever made holds no ground and was simply made up by Royal to turn his readers against...