I don't believe we should.
Many say that he discovered the earth is round- and I do not even know how that began Lol. By Columbus' day, this was already common knowledge. He was actually just bad at math, and did not believe the experts whom said that the earth was round. He believed it to be pear-shaped, and far smaller than it actually was (He also thought it had a nipple on top, like a "Woman's breast", and wrote about this in his journal). This belief as to the earth being far smaller than it actually is was what led to him setting sail.
Columbus never made it to modern-day United States. He made it to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, etc. I am of the mind that you cannot really 'discover' a land that already has a quarter-million people already residing there. And a Norse explorer had already very likely made it there 500 years earlier, meaning Columbus was not even the first European to set foot in America. It is also strongly believed that a Chinese Admiral made it there 70 years earlier, as is supported by the findings of an early map outlining both North AND South America. And those people whom Columbus 'discovered' were then slaughtered when Columbus returned with 17 ships and the intent to enslave the Taino people and steal their gold (Which they did not have). Columbus was so angered by this that he began to slaughter them to such an extent that the island's population dropped to the 200. Essentially all that he did was blindly sail across the Carribean, murder a bunch of people, and died thinking the earth was pear-shaped with a nipple and he had made it to India. He did not even have the awareness to return and inform people that he had FOUND America, as he still believed he was in the East Indies.
Columbus was not celebrated widely until the 1820s. It was Washington Irving who wrote a collection of Tall Tales- one of which painted Columbus as a hero who had discovered America and proved that the earth was round. And this really caught on, as new Americans were looking for a hero at that time. This was when a large influx of Italian immigrants were making their way here and being mistreated, so Italian-AMericans held tight to this version of Columbus that Irving had written, and it became widely-promoted in an attempt to prove that Italians were a huge part of American history and belonged here. This was what led to an incompetent, brutal, greedy man who was awful at math and believed that the earth was pear-shaped with a nipple being viewed as an American hero.
I am of the mind that we should not celebrate a blatant and incompetent genocidal maniac. Perhaps even celebrating the common-knowledge being spread of the existence of America would be appropriate (Though that, in its own way, is a celebration of genocide, as well), but we should not be treating Columbus as some bold hero. He thought he was going to make it to India in a matter of days. He discovered America by complete accident, and was absolutely awful when he did so. You are not inherently a hero by doing so- it was a matter of chance which he then used for violence. Teach about him as a part of history, of course, but do not celebrate him.
