Raining on More Than a Parade

So a deal has been struck on Christopher Columbus. The embarrassment concluded. Cristobal Colon, 20th-generation descendant of you-know-who, will now share his leadership of the Rose Parade with a carefully selected American Indian.

Don’t ask why the grand marshalship of the Rose Parade should matter to American Indians or anyone else. It does. As always, the reason is television. In case you were curious, here’s how the whole thing will play out on New Year’s Day:

Colon will start down the parade route simultaneously with his co-grand marshal, Ben Nighthorse Campbell. Once started, however, they will travel separately.

Colon will proceed in a carriage. Campbell on his horse. Each man will be free to receive applause and/or boos in his own way, in his own time.

Campbell has chosen to appear in war bonnet. Colon will eschew costume. At various times, they will trade the leadership position of the parade. The exact timing of these trade-offs has not yet been determined.

And so it goes. At some point, probably many years from now, this question may be asked: When did the concept of “America” finally roll over and die? At what point did it become impossible to celebrate any aspect of America that suggested unity or common purpose?

There will be many nominations for this honor. But at the risk of making a rush to judgment, let me suggest that Monday’s capitulation to the Columbus haters may turn out to be a front-runner.

The beef against Columbus is well known. It is said that he did not “discover” America any more than Marco Polo “discovered” China. When Columbus arrived, the continent was populated by flourishing civilizations from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Moreover, Columbus raped and pillaged those civilizations, as did his successors. He brought disease to peoples who had not developed immunities, he returned generosity with greed.

All true. It is also true that much of that process was inevitable. The Europeans would have found the New World soon enough, whether or not Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And the resulting confrontation was doomed to be bloody. Advancing civilizations, whether native or otherwise, rarely proceed peacefully into new lands. Just ask the tribes who were victims of the Navajos and the Apaches.

But why are we talking history? These arguments are not--really--about history. They are morality arguments, guilt-blame arguments, victim-contest arguments. In these situations, the biggest victim always wins.

So I say let’s push the frontier. If Columbus has to share with the Indians, what about the others?

Others? Oh, yes.

We know, for example, that Columbus was not even the first outsider to hit these shores. Most likely it was Leif Ericson, the seagoing Norseman, although the Chinese also have made an intriguing and compelling claim.

So let’s put Leif on a rose-petal boat and tow him through Pasadena with Colon and Campbell. We can argue later about the Chinese.

Then there’s the Jewish question. Revisionist historians have made a strong case that Columbus was a Jew. Descendant Colon, alas, is not. I’m sure you see the problem. The Jews have never gotten credit for discovering America, doubtless the victims of Protestant-written history, and it’s about time the Tournament of Roses addressed this question.

And finally you could get into the business of the real first Americans--the bison, the beaver and the bear in the woods. But let’s not.

No, let’s not. Christopher Columbus, see, does represent something. He represents most of what America has become. The Italians and the Germans and the Irish and all who would come pouring over from Europe to convert the continent to a modern world.

And convert it they did. Eventually these immigrants would build a country that would overshadow those from which they came. If they brought vice and disease, they also brought universities and medicine and a talent for making money like no one had ever seen.

I’m not saying that’s all of America. It’s not the American Indians or the Latino immigrants or the blacks. In America, there is no person, no symbol, that envelops us all.

But the Columbus heritage matters. It’s a major part of what we were, and what we’ve become. And it deserves something better than a ritual of contempt and apology.