Columbus and European hubris

THE EDITOR: The Guyanese historian Ivan Van Sertima made a compelling case that West Africans were visiting the Americas long before Columbus in his book They Came Before Columbus.

Those who believe that history as told by Europeans is the unvarnished truth will say with disdain: that’s just Afrocentrism.

But there are whites who have made the same claim, supported by their research. According to renowned American historian and linguist Leo Weiner of Harvard University, one of the strongest pieces of evidence to support the fact that black people sailed to America before Christopher Columbus was a journal entry from Columbus himself.

In Weiner’s book, Africa and the Discovery of America, he explains that Columbus noted in his journal that the Native Americans confirmed black-skinned people had come from the south-east in boats, trading in gold-tipped spears.

When those spear tips were assayed they were found to be of similar composition as those made in West Africa.

The US was responsible for a great technological feat when its astronauts on the moon. Would anyone who is not insane say that the American astronauts “discovered” the moon?

Then there are some non-Europeans who oppose any and everything that’s proposed by people of African descent. For their education let’s see how India has treated with the statues of their former masters during the British Raj. The following is taken from the London School of Economics history blog:

“There is a park in New Delhi that commemorates the British Raj. Dilapidated effigies of British monarchs and viceroys can be found there. An assemblage of arch-imperialists that once imposed a racist and violent order are now covered in graffiti and pigeon droppings. The British Raj sought to cast its imperial legacy in stone but the history of the Coronation Park reveals India’s ambivalence to its imperial past.”

What to do with monuments representing off-colour political ideals? From Cape Town to Kiev to Charlottesville, this question continues to stir peoples once subject to the imperial yoke. The looming statues of empire continue to be objects of protest in piazzas, parks and campuses. But not in India. In New Delhi, these physical manifestations of colonial authority have not been the target of protest movements. Because India instead opted to create a graveyard of statues.

ARTHUR NURSE

ajamu29@yahoo.com