Are you not working today on account of some government-sanctioned holiday that today celebrates its 75th year of being a federal holiday and otherwise only existed in some make-believe land called "Colorado" before 1934? It commemorates a day when some dude from Europe stuck a flag on what would later be American soil and declared it "discovered." That is, despite the existence of indigenous tribes before he and his band of small pox-carriers infected America with his plight of in-breeding, poor animal husbandry, and genocide. Since then though, America's evolved into a post-racial paradise, where its denizens, wrought with liberal guilt, remain unable to properly reflect back on the scourge of Columbus-inspired racism as it continues to rear its hydra-licious heads in our contemporary culture. So here's an abbreviated recap.

1. In the prehistoric times of Disney animation, there was a film that everyone immediately regretted releasing. The animation empire has since been trying to dissociate itself, but finds itself doing a rather shoddy job at it. Pocahontas was all kinds of WTF with a grown woman whose grandmother was apparently a gnarled willow tree and whose best friends were of a different species. But in 1994, we tacitly approved Disney's decision to have Vanessa Williams belt "Colors of the Wind" and make us think that indigenous tribes, in pre-colonial times, did such things as "ask the grinning bobcat why he grins" and regarded "the rainstorm and river" as their "brothers." Oh dear.

2. Then there are our sports teams. My knowledge of sports is limited. Regardless, two teams immediately known for their hilarious misappropriation of indigenous cultures are the Washington Redskins (which is rather self-explanatory) and the Atlanta Braves. The Braves not only have a nifty tomahawk as part of its logo, but also the ever-precious "tomahawk chop" as its defining watchword.

3. Talk of tomahawks segues perfectly into a video game that we all hold near and dear to our hearts: Street Fighter II. Clad in feathers, fringe, and denim, the character T. Hawk possesses attacks like this spirited eagle strike, which while making him an easy pick against nimble, but weak opponents, still painted a picture of reductive thinking, especially in tandem with the fact that he was originally named Geronimo. That's not to say Mortal Kombat didn't have its own playable stereotype either.

4. Finally, we have issues with terminology so vague that even the most learned and well-intentioned of us is probably guilty of racism. No one knows whether to employ the term "Native Americans" or "Amerindians" or "American Indians" -- not even Wikipedia! All terms are, at best, reductive catchalls that lump unlike groups of people together. So we remain pitifully deadlocked, as if forever stranded in the world's worst anthropology course, trying to figure out whether to keep or do away with this silly holiday. But hey! At least there's a good book to fill in all the remaining blanks.