Anticipating the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District’s pending assessment of its Columbus ship logo, I respond to recent commentary that asserted the logo is “fully fitting” for the district. The commentary is informative for evaluating the logo’s appropriateness, but not in the way its author intended. Consider two of its salient points: (1) “Using the Santa Maria ship logo recognizes and salutes the spirit of discovery: the determined resolve to go where no one has gone before …” (2) “The Santa Maria [ship] epitomizes a daring feat of courage and skill undertaken to realize Columbus’s dreams of winning riches from trading with Asia and also of taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to foreign shores.” The statement defining discovery as going “where no one has gone before,” disregards millions of indigenous people who populated the Americas long before Columbus’s time. It implies that these peoples didn’t count because they were seen as culturally inferior by Europeans. The statement mentioning the “gospel of Jesus Christ” refers to institutional Christianity’s role in the Spanish conquest of the Americas. The two statements connect discovery with cultural dominance. Discovery and cultural dominance The Gilder Lehrman Institute, widely recognized for supporting history […]
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