Celebrating Columbus, and Diversity

The editorial argues for "disinterested scholarship and public education about all the aspects of Europe's encounter with the Americas." One wonders who will provide the disinterested scholarship - have the teachings up to now really been free of the biases of race, religion, and social class?The author's main contention seems to be that revisionist "critiques of the exploration and colonization of the New World half a millennium later are a blinkered application of contemporary values to long-ago events." Such events should be evaluated in "the contexts of the social, political, economic, and religious culture of the times." Inherent in such a view is the notion that a moral context is irrelevant or redundant. Such an argument seeks to denigrate or disregard the validity of the various historical struggles for justice and a human dignity for all regardless of race, ethnicity, or sex, for example such milestone achievements as women's suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and the right of workers to form unions. Peter Connolly, Boston

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