The Truth behind
the Truth
"Even it was pain to be told,
but surely the truth was absolutely thing that had to be revealed."
-Hadi Wibowo
Introduction
Truth is the most important thing that
has to be revealed. Everything that happened is has to be told honestly, so the
mistake didn’t happen twice. Howard Zinn, the creator of the book A People's History of the United States,
was the man who struggled to tell the United States people about the truth of
Christopher Columbus. All of time, people thought that Christopher Columbus was
the man who found the American Continent, the savior, the lighter, and the Hero
of America. History was being manipulated at that time, and Howard Zinn was the
one who revealed the truth about Columbus. Howard Zinn thought why the person
who genocide the whole Indian Arawaks had to be a Hero. If United States people
continued think that Columbus was a hero, they would repeat the wrong thing
that happened on the past. Howard Zinn sent the truth with his book to make the
United States people realized they have to know the truth even it is a pain. It
was a coup d’état to his nation, and
the biggest step to clear the thick cloud that surrounded United States’
history.
Summary
There
are several basic points that Zinn wrote on his
book. First, Howard Zinn said that book could change people’s mind and changed
their attitude. It was his reason why he wrote A People's History of the United States, because he wanted to tell
United States about the Christopher Columbus who they thought was the
discoverer of America.
Second, Christopher Columbus’ real
intention was not to find America. Columbus and the explorers who followed him
to the New World did so for essentially one overriding reason: financial gain.
As Zinn asserted, “Behind the English
invasion of North America, behind their massacre of Indians, their deception,
their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilization based on
private profit.”
Main Body
There
are four points on Columbus that are neglected in Zinn’s article. First, Howard Zinn’s expose of Columbus’s writings
shows what a sociopath he was. All he cared about were his own fame and riches;
he could care less about the entire civilizations he was murdering. The women
and children that died of starvation, the men who were killed for being unable
to find enough gold, and the random beheadings of innocent natives for sport
didn’t seem to bother him at all. There
seemed to be only one European on that island who had any semblance of a
conscience, and that was Bartolome de Las
Casas, and even he ran a farm full of Indian (and later black) slaves.
Luckily Las Casas wrote down a lot of the things that were going on out of
sheer disgust, and luckily Columbus was such an egomaniac that he kept diaries
of his exploits. That enabled people like Zinn to be able to contradict the
written history. As Zinn said, “When you
learn about information that has been withheld from you, it may lead you to
wonder what else has been withheld.” He wanted to make United States people
realized that what they did all of the time was wrong and made them repent.
Second, Zinn wanted to make the United
States people knew that what they did all of the time was wrong. Columbus’
influence was make United States became the nation that did what Columbus did
in the past, a hijacker-nation, the greedy-nation and the genocider-nation. Zinn’s
ultimate goal was to influence new generations of young students into becoming
revolutionaries whose hatred for the United States would impel them to work
toward “a transformation of national
priorities” and a comprehensive “change
in the system.” “The prisoners of the
system will continue to rebel,” Zinn said in hopes that “someday our grandchild, or our great
grandchildren, might possibly see a different and marvelous world.”
Third, Zinn did not mention the real discoverer
of American continent. As United States people said that Columbus was the man
who discovered American continent, but it was wrong. In an essay that titled Pre-Columbian Muslims in America, Dr.
Mroueh gave some fact that the Muslims from Andalusia and West Africa came to
America five century before Columbus. Howard Zinn also just mentioned Columbus
bad attitude without gave his good attitude. It was not good for the reader who
wanted to compare the vices and virtues of Columbus.
Last, literacy affected the history. If Bartolome de Las
Casas did not write down a
lot of the things that were going on when Columbus genocide the Indian, Zinn
would not be able to change the history. As Bud Garner said, "When you speak, your words echo only across
the room or down the hall. But when you write, your words echo down the ages."
What Bartolome de Las Casas and Howard Zinn did was the fact that literacy
could change the history.
Conclusion
So it can be concluded from Zinn’s
article that all the bad
things that happened in the past were an admonition. So the people could learn
from it and prevent the bad things happened again. Even it was pain to be told,
but surely the truth was absolutely thing that had to be revealed. Howard Zinn
made the whole United States’ knew the truth that happened in the past, even he
received many bad things from the reader but he was successfully straightening
the past. As prescribed in Holy Quran that the past was admonition for the
people who live in the present.
فَجَعَلۡنَٰهَا
نَكَٰلٗا لِّمَا بَيۡنَ يَدَيۡهَا وَمَا خَلۡفَهَا وَمَوۡعِظَةٗ لِّلۡمُتَّقِينَ
٦٦
“So We
made them an example to those who witnessed it and those who came after it, and
an admonition to those who guard (against evil).” (Q.S. Al Baqarah: 66)
References
Holy Quran
Waterston,
Alisse and Maria D. Vesper, 2009, Anthropology off the Shelf: Anthropologists
on Writing, Chichester: Blackwell.
http://controversyandhyperbole.blogspot.com
http://discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=939
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