Columbus Day Tweets: Twitter Weighs In, Many Prefer ‘Indigenous Peoples Day’

Columbus Day is upon us once again, and with the day come a slew of tweets condemning the man behind the holiday.

COLUMBUS DAY TWEETS

Christopher Columbus is taught in schools as the man who discovered America, with the fact that he enslaved and killed many indigenous peoples left out. Twitter has not forgotten this important part of history, and many took to the social media site today to call out the holiday.

“In honor of #ColumbusDay, take this tweet, put your own name on it, then erase mine,” jokes one user. “You’ve got to hand it to Christopher Columbus, because he would have definitely taken it away & then murdered you,” said another.

And the jokes kept coming.

While Twitter joked about the history of Columbus, many cities across the country renamed the day Indigenous Peoples Day. Albuquerque, Portland, St. Paul, Bexar County, Traverse City, and Olympia were among major cities to make the change in a push to oust the offensive holiday. The campaign to abolish Columbus Day began in 1990 when South Dakota renamed the day Native American Day. Berkeley, California, followed suit two years later with Indigenous Peoples Day.

“Wishing everyone a very happy Indigenous Peoples Day today!” wrote Common on Twitter. “#ColumbusDay deez nuts,” said Jesse Williams, with a photo of another tweet that reads, “I assume that a Columbus Day sale means I can just walk into a store and take whatever I want.” Johnny Taylor, Jr. adds, “Don’t act like you’ve never knocked on the wrong door, killed everyone inside, and then decided you lived there. #columbusday.”