Let's Celebrate Columbus Day? (SumBlog 5)

Modernization versus dependency, those are just two of the terms that we discussed in class last week. Now, I don’t know about you, but I had heard of modernization before. Maybe not the exact definition we went over in class, but overall, you hear about it in the news all the time. “This country does this, one step closer to becoming modern.” Or “This nation is becoming more democratic, it’s finally breaking free, and becoming more ‘American’.” Now, I had always had a little problem with how the news worded this, but I just let it go because, well it’s part of our world. After discussion in class however, and learning that there IS another view, I now understand that looking at the world from one perspective can be very ethnocentric.

                This second term, Dependency, now it was very interesting to learn about, and to commemorate today- it being Columbus Day and all- let’s look at how different our world would be if Columbus hadn’t only viewed the world through the Modernization framework. What if Columbus viewed America though the scope of the Dependency theory? How different would our world be right now? Well, let’s be honest, it would be completely different. In fact, some of us might not even be here. He probably would have respected the Native American’s land, and realized he hadn’t discovered America, well, because other people lived here. He also wouldn’t think that any country not European was backwards. But as we know, he changed many things, and most of those changes are why America is the way it is now, and also probably the reason that some of us are even here now. So, while he didn’t do the most amazing stuff, and in fact, now we would consider what he did genocide, racist, and just plain horrific. So, I’m going to pose the question to you, seeing as I honestly don’t know what I would want. If you could, would you want Columbus to have a different view when “discovering” America? Or, maybe the ends justify the means? Now I will end with this picture I’ve been seeing on Facebook all day. Enjoy, and thanks for reading.