Lies My Teacher Told Me: Chapter 2

This chapter focuses on Christopher Columbus's real history and the Eurocentric ideas that is hidden behind it. Frankly speaking, I didn't really enjoy reading this chapter. I strongly felt that Loewen's specialized studies on racial materials were excessively pushed out in front. However, it is true how the perspective from the racial minority side was completely neglected in many of the textbooks. Therefore, the information that he delivered in this chapter are things that we must know in order to do away with our Eurocentric historical interpretation. 

Inside the text, Loewen explains how current American history textbooks only offer inadequate amount of information so as to appreciate the full context of that period. He says in his chapter, "Our history books ought to discuss seriously what happened and why, instead of supplying vague, nearly circular pronouncements..."(35). For example, talking of Columbus, because textbooks wanted to put more emphasis on the "great discovery" that he accomplished, they failed to mention the descriptive facts about the European history of the time that would possibly give a negative image of Europeans(Americans). This concealment of the context leads to make the what and why connection of his great undertakings invisible. Moreover, Loewen points out that the way of representation of Columbus in textbooks somehow justifies domination. Despite the brutal attitudes and treatments towards the racial minorities (such as Indians, and African Americans) that had taken place during the process of domination, it is regarded as an essential and inevitable tool for the West to expand its power. Which leads to the widespread belief of Eurocentrism and disregard of racial minorities till the present. Furthermore, Loewen mentions many other accomplishments done by various nationalities before Columbus in order to illustrate the intentional selection of facts that are taking place in textbooks. They only designate information that are "important", however, those pieces of information turn out to be "important" for the only reason that they are done by white people. Here comes Eurocentrism again. The suggestion he made about the real definition of the term "discovery" was interesting for me, because this unleashed the fact that Columbus's great "discovery" turned out not to be a "discovery" at all. 

Although most of the points that Loewen made were based on racial materials, these facts were also one of the essential aspects of Columbus. The thing that caught my eyes the most inside this chapter was the countless portrait images of Columbus. I actually searched for his images using Google images (using the ultimate techniques that I acquired in last class! Yeah!), and look what I found! How can all these be one face of a single man?