Columbus Day

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think Italian Americans and Catholics have a right to be upset. I’d have no problem swapping out another more acceptable Italian hero, of which there are many. Or, just call it Italian American Day. But to just swap out and call it Indigenous Day is incredibly intellectually lazy. It’s similar to forcing everyone to celebrate Juneteenth which only freed some slaves (in the Confederacy) instead of December 6 which was when the 13th amendment was enacted abolishing all forced labor. I hate intellectually lazy.

Who is forced to celebrate Juneteenth?

I’m guessing every school and corporation that doesn’t want to get burned to the ground?

Ah so public backlash against a corporation is not okay? Thought y'all liked free markets?

In a society where half a dozen states are currently pushing for laws on the books codifying that teachers cannot teach “critical race theory“ or in some cases even say the word gay, it is pretty laughable that you have somehow put it into your mind that the liberals are the ones trying to control schools and limit what people are allowed to say. As for corporations, they have to know their clients. If they are selling it to the MAGA crowd, then I’m confident they will not acknowledge Juneteenth. If ultimately a corporation goes out of business due to protests over their refusal to acknowledge this holiday, then clearly they have dramatically misread their client base, and therefore they should never have existed because the free market has declared them incompetent.

You don’t know much about the current state of k-12 education nor the Florida law. If you spent time researching either, you would have more substantive comments.

[Anonymous]

Neither. It's no Holiday for me. It's a work day like all the rest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think Italian Americans and Catholics have a right to be upset. I’d have no problem swapping out another more acceptable Italian hero, of which there are many. Or, just call it Italian American Day. But to just swap out and call it Indigenous Day is incredibly intellectually lazy. It’s similar to forcing everyone to celebrate Juneteenth which only freed some slaves (in the Confederacy) instead of December 6 which was when the 13th amendment was enacted abolishing all forced labor. I hate intellectually lazy.

Who is forced to celebrate Juneteenth?

I’m guessing every school and corporation that doesn’t want to get burned to the ground?

Ah so public backlash against a corporation is not okay? Thought y'all liked free markets?

In a society where half a dozen states are currently pushing for laws on the books codifying that teachers cannot teach “critical race theory“ or in some cases even say the word gay, it is pretty laughable that you have somehow put it into your mind that the liberals are the ones trying to control schools and limit what people are allowed to say. As for corporations, they have to know their clients. If they are selling it to the MAGA crowd, then I’m confident they will not acknowledge Juneteenth. If ultimately a corporation goes out of business due to protests over their refusal to acknowledge this holiday, then clearly they have dramatically misread their client base, and therefore they should never have existed because the free market has declared them incompetent.

You don’t know much about the current state of k-12 education nor the Florida law. If you spent time researching either, you would have more substantive comments.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can use primary sources to decide for yourself whether Columbus deserves to be honored. This entry appears in his own log: ""A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand."

We're not honoring him. We're honoring the fact that he discovered America. (And yes, I know there were already people here -- he discovered it and the people here, too, from his point of view.) We celebrate the first steps toward the creation of our country, not the man himself.

I appreciate your overall comment, though I'd just say perhaps a better way to frame Columbus's significance is it's when the Old World met the New World in a way that "stuck." Yes, I get that if it hadn't been him, it would have been someone else, but his voyage represent what is perhaps one of the most significant events in human history, for better and for worse.

That’s not what the day is about.

The holiday was founded because Italian Americans were rightfully upset about what happened in New Orleans and elsewhere.

So they picked…Columbus.

And now most people know he was an azzhole.

There is a huge amount of scholarship which, taken as a whole, shows a complex man. What is indisputable is that he was the most brilliant navigator in history and a completely courageous mariner.

From your thoughtful conclusion, I think DCUM is about your intellectual speed!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Acknowledge" is a weird word to use in this question?

I acknowledge that both are holidays. Columbus Day seems kind of stupid in light of what we know about his "discovery," that he wasn't even the first European to bump into North America, and that he was a worse-than-average human even considering the standards of his time.

But, all of that said, the holiday doesn't provoke strong emotions in me. Yes, European contact was horrible for indigenous peoples. But that was inevitable. Whatever mistreatment was inflicted by the Europeans, the impact of disease was always going to be several orders of magnitude more destructive than anything the Europeans could inflict intentionally.

I'm more sympathetic toward the sentiments behind Indigenous People's Day, but it feels artificial and contrived. It's not its own thing but is rather a reaction to Columbus Day; so there is still a European frame about the whole thing.

Agree with this whole post.

Columbus Day is also a contrived holiday basically invented as a reaction to discrimination against Italian Americans:

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/10/14/232120128/how-columbus-sailed-into-u-s-history-thanks-to-italians

But I think the point that discovery and settlement of North America was inevitable is a good one. We don't vilify all the other explorers.

So now we’re supposed to just ignore the ugly historical racism against Italian-Americans?

Talk about revisionist!

Nah, I’m good with just keeping it Columbus Day.

[Anonymous]

Question:

If we cancel the “Columbus” in Columbus Day, shouldn’t we change D.C. to

District of Indigenous Peoples ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can use primary sources to decide for yourself whether Columbus deserves to be honored. This entry appears in his own log: ""A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand."

We're not honoring him. We're honoring the fact that he discovered America. (And yes, I know there were already people here -- he discovered it and the people here, too, from his point of view.) We celebrate the first steps toward the creation of our country, not the man himself.

I appreciate your overall comment, though I'd just say perhaps a better way to frame Columbus's significance is it's when the Old World met the New World in a way that "stuck." Yes, I get that if it hadn't been him, it would have been someone else, but his voyage represent what is perhaps one of the most significant events in human history, for better and for worse.

That’s not what the day is about.

The holiday was founded because Italian Americans were rightfully upset about what happened in New Orleans and elsewhere.

So they picked…Columbus.

And now most people know he was an azzhole.

There is a huge amount of scholarship which, taken as a whole, shows a complex man. What is indisputable is that he was the most brilliant navigator in history and a completely courageous mariner.

From your thoughtful conclusion, I think DCUM is about your intellectual speed!

Why would you debase yourself to engage with us intellectual vermin?