What Do Christopher Columbus, Democracy, Globalization and Culture Have in Common?

In the Todorov reading, the author spends a great deal of time summarizing Columbus’ descriptions of the Native Americans.  By looking at Columbus’ descriptions of the Native Americans and especially his fascination with their nakedness, almost describing them as animalistic, it is evident that Columbus felt this air of superiority over them. Columbus describes the Native Americans as “wild or cunning” whenever addressing Native Americans’ views that he deems irrelevant. In order to “humanize” the Native Americans, Columbus makes it his mission to convert the Native Americans to Christianity instead of respecting their own established culture; which Columbus views as inferior. In fulfilling this duty of converting the Native Americans to Christianity, he believes that he is doing a great service not only to them but also to his home country of Spain and most importantly, he is doing it for God. From Todorov’s reading, it is clear that Columbus wanted to alter the Native Americans’ culture and religion in order to make them apt citizens for European society and in the process of “Europeanizing” the Native Americans, they lost much of their own cultural practices. In reading Todorov’s piece, there are clear similarities between Columbus’ forced assimilation of Native Americans into European society and the current push by the Western world to spread democracy by means of globalization today. Although globalization and the spread of democracy in recent years has not resulted in the wiping out of an entire group’s culture, if the recent push for worldwide democracy through globalization continues at the rate at which it is moving, does it have the potential to have the same damaging impact on non-democratic societies to the same affect that Columbus’ destructive goal of assimilation had on the Native Americans?

In my history of American Education class, we spent a lot of time studying the education of various immigrant groups, minority groups and Native Americans and their experiences in the education system in the United States. One major, recurring theme that was discussed was that immigrants and minority groups were forced to assimilate to fit into American culture, society, and schools; which meant that they often had to adjust their own cultural practices in order to fit into the American “societal norm.” However, one major difference between immigrant groups assimilating into American culture versus the Native Americans’ process of assimilation is that the various immigrant groups had a homeland that they could always return to if they wished and Native Americans did not have this option. If immigrants did not like the American practices, ideals or norms, they could return to their homeland (even though this was difficult considering travel took much longer then) where the cultural practices were familiar. If these various immigrant groups did decide to stay in America and assimilate into the culture, they took comfort in knowing that they had a state across the water filled with people who shared their beliefs, values and ideals; the mere knowledge the immigrants had that their home country was there served as an active reminder of their heritage and where they came from.  When Columbus and the other European settlers came to America, they not only took over the Native Americans’ land, they left the Native Americans with no place to turn to if they ever needed a reminder of their heritage or cultural practices and they were certainly left with no place to escape the European settlers. Thus, Native Americans were forced to assimilate into American life, with no landmark reminder of their people or history. With their homeland taken over by the European settlers and their forced assimilation into this new society, Native Americans lost many of their own cultural practices.

Todorov’s piece made me think about how important it is to have a place (whether that be a state, town, community, etc.) where you can go to connect with people of your own background; that share your ideals, heritage, or cultural practices. While globalization has proven to have a wide array of advantages, (especially technologically) Todorov’s reading made me realize that globalization also poses a threat to religions, cultures, and practices that are different from the West and have been in place for hundreds of years. In class we talked about whether or not we believed that a culture could be wiped out by the increasing spread of democracy. While I don’t believe that this can happen because (as I have learned from my cross-cultural psychology class) the cultural norms found in the society we grew up with and were exposed to lays out the foundation for our personality, influences our moral understandings and cultivates our ability to reason through problems. All of these things: personality, morals and reasoning skills are influenced by the teachings of our parents and our cultural practices; the majority of which have been passed down from many generations and has thus become a foundation of who we are as individuals. With that said, I don’t think democracy can take away a culture in today’s society that has been passed down for many generations and is embedded in its people. However, I do see similarities between the United States’ push to spread democracy and Columbus’ push to spread Christianity and “Europeanize” the Native Americans. It is important that the United States’ effort to spread democracy is done so with the intent of helping other states see why democracy is a good thing, and not done with the intent of eliminating cultures that contain different ideologies than the United States. How do we ensure that the spread of democracy is done in a way that is not threatening to cultures with different ideologies? This question has been brought up in this class before, however before reading Todorov’s piece, I did not fully understand how detrimental globalization and the spread of democracy can be for non-democratic societies around the world.