"Not Columbus" Day – SJU...
- Thread starter firestorm
- Start date
Hard to fill a float for Fall mini break celebration
It not:
Rocket
Well-known member
Beast, thank you for your excellent post on this topic.
I find it troubling that a Federal holiday, where millions of government workers still get a day off with pay, can become the target of a twisted woke culture where, even on this site, saying HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY gets washed.
Some folks should seriously consider moving to Canada if American history troubles them so much.
I find it troubling that a Federal holiday, where millions of government workers still get a day off with pay, can become the target of a twisted woke culture where, even on this site, saying HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY gets washed.
Some folks should seriously consider moving to Canada if American history troubles them so much.
L J S A
Well-known member
American history invented by fictional children's books. Maybe you can move to Hispaniola to spearhead Columbus Day celebrations.
Rocket
Well-known member
Or maybe I'll research history at Columbia University, or take an opinion poll in Columbus, Ohio, or go fishing on the Columbia River, or visit Colombia.
Better still, I'll spearhead a name-change for America itself! Amerigo Vespucci had no right to sail in Mohawk waters and who the hell was Giovanni da Verrazzano? Exhaustive DNA analysis will likely prove he was an Ashkenazi Jew from Poland.
I for one will be celebrating the Aztec culture of beheading their Huaxtec and Taeascan captives before the Spanish spoiled the "celebrations".
guinness77
Well-known member
LJSA, I love your posts, and the fact that you went to Sewanhaka HS, a place that boasts of Zendon Hamilton and Vinny Testaverde and a town that may have the best Italian restaurant on LI - King Umbertos.
The point about Columbus Day is not so much about Christopher Columbus, and what he did or didn't discover, or his deadly encounter(s) with (violent) indigenous tribes, the latter allegations causing the cultural cancellation of the still national holiday.
Columbus Day has been a celebration and source of pride of the contributions of Italians to American life and culture. Columbus himself may represent the first and flagbearer. Certainly, in a timeline at least, it was his exploration that resulted in further European explorations of the New World, and setllements in North America that became the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
On Columbus Day Italians celebrate ALL Italians that have impacted life here and elsewhere, whether it be physicists Enrico Fermi (nuclear reactor), Gugliemo Marconi (transmission of radio waves), many statesmen including Fiorello LaGuardia, the Cuomos, Giuilani, 1st female VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro), crooners such as Enrico Caruso, Pavarotti, Sinatra, too many actors and producers to list, athletes such as DiMaggio (who almost singlehandedly raised America's perception of Italian Americans), Marciano, Piazza and hundreds more.
Curiously, with knowledge of this, why didn't contemporary leaders simply deemphasize Columbus and instead call the day Italian American Day where all of these contributions can be celebrated with pride.
From Montauk to Malibu the U.S. government, in actions perhaps worse than slavery, murdered, displaced, and marginalized native indigenous people. Buffalo were eradicated by the millions to the point of extinction in order to take away a main food source of Native Americans.
So in a very real way, before we address reparations to African Americans (California is proposing $250,000 per voter uhh person) how about trillions given to native americans. Maybe millions of square miles of land be handed over. Maybe even the campus of St Johns or part of the endowment.
Much more simply, instead of handing $$, or correcting own own racist attitudes towards indigenous people, let's give them a day. Hey it worked for MLK birthday or Juneteenth. It's a lot easier to use an Itsluan explorer as a scapegoat than address the fact that this country stole the homeland of indigenous people.
So yea, Columbus Day does way beyond the accomplishments and encounters of an Italian explorer and maybe a lot to do with very real anti Italian bias working its way to the surface.
Then I'm certain as a proud Italian American, you'd agree it would make more sense to celebrate Italian Americans than Indigenous people on Columbus Day.
I wouldn't mind it being an Italian-American Day, but you're also not providing any nuance to what Columbus Day really represents/represented. I remember growing up, and there's plenty of information out there, of Columbus Day being more about the "discovery of the Americas", not a day to celebrate Italian-American heritage. That is especially true worldwide and nationwide. So, in that, yeah, Indigneous Day would be more representative. In NYC, that context is different so I understand why it would seem like a zero-sum thing.
I'd also argue that giving people days (or months) isn't exactly helping them or doing anything substantive, but that's a conversation not for this message board.
I don't often loose my cool with my daughter(she may tell you otherwise), but the other day she said to me "Dad, no one celebrates Columbus Day anymore". To which I replied "Maybe no one from your generation celebrates Columbus Day anymore, but rest assured that almost all Italian-Americans, and many non-Italian-Americans, of my generation and your Grandparents' generation still celebrate Columbus Day. And with all due respect, I don't frankly give a crap(I used a more vulger word) what your generation does or doesn't do. When my generation is dead and gone, your generation can do what you want".
I'm okay with Columbus Day not being a day off. It's not one of the 7 days most businesses give employees off anyway. School hollidays are a different story. In NYC Jewish holidays were always days off, mostly because there were so many Jewish teachers, there wouldn't be enough subs to fill in if teachers took off for the high holy days of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. In other places in the US, not only are schools open, but most people are completely unaware of these holidays. We used to have separate holidays for Lincoln and Washington's birthday. MLK's birthday is a national holiday but not a mandatory day off from work. I'm not arguing for Columbus day to be a day off.
Really, I would be completely okay with diminishing the name Columbus Day, and replacing it with Italian American day the same way we have a Puerto Rican Day parade. But to somehow point with laser specificity about alleged atrocities committed by Columbus against a tiny number of indigenous people which very well could have been self defense, and in turn rename the holiday for Indigenous people is kind of a joke considered that this country literally went to war against native Americans and a sovereign nation (Mexico) in the name of manifest destiny.
FWIW, too many people who celebrate St. Patrick's Day need the day after off too. Maybe that Day should be replaced by Substance Abuse Day or Twelve Step Program Day.
But, to be clear, my main points were not that these changes were implemented, but bowing to fears of pressure to do so. You are well aware that there are forces at work to remove Christmas as a national holiday, targeted lawsuits that force small towns without legal defense funds to remove WWI and WWII memorials that have religious symbols or biblical verse on monuments, even praying in public places. This is NOT a political discussion in the least. Across Europe in the early 1940s, not enough people stood up to atrocities against Jews, fearing the consequences of doing so. When we lose our resolve to stand up, we've already given up our freedom.
Last edited:
Just a little levity on my part.
I really don't shiv a git about this issue. It reminds me of the "War on Christmas."
Anyway, I wish I was Italian so I could visit my relatives in warm, sunny Palermo instead of cold, gray Galway.
That, and the whole Renaissance thing, architecture, craftsmanship, art, food, creating the groundwork for western civilization, etc.
Last edited:
You mean celebrate “Indigenous Day” for a people who were not any more indigenous
to North America than Columbus was? Celebrate a people who were every bit as violent, cruel, and unfeeling to those who were not “them” as any others you can cite? Not hard to find many examples of the tortures Indians inflicted on their captured members of other tribes, slow and painful exceedingly cruel tortures. The slaughter of older women and youngsters, babies particularly, the frequent keeping of females of child bearing age or approaching that, for breeding purposes.
Re-writing history is a very slippery slope, but taking events, ethics and mores out of the context of the times in which they occurred is even more slippery.
guinness77
Well-known member
Whoa whoa whoa…don’t go taking my time and a half away from me now
I thought the one thing we'd all agree on is that we need more days off, not less.Whoa whoa whoa…don’t go taking my time and a half away from me now
guinness77
Well-known member
Or, more working holidays with built-in OT…I’ll gladly take that too.I thought the one thing we'd all agree on is that we need more days off, not less.