Brown: Good-bye, Columbus Day

Brown University abandons its celebration of Columbus Day. A bunch of ignorant Sons of Italy--i.e., Columbus apologists--demonstrate why this is a good idea.

Brown casts off Columbus, agreeing to forgo celebrating his dayAt Brown University, it’s goodbye, Columbus.

The faculty voted Tuesday to drop Columbus Day in favor of “Fall Weekend” when a student group urged the change “after controversy arose over the nature of Christopher Columbus’ conquests and treatment of Native Americans.”

The school will celebrate Fall Weekend on the same day as Columbus Day, according to the student group Native Americans at Brown.Let the ignorance begin“I didn’t know Columbus came to continental America—I thought he just went to those [Caribbean] islands,” said Raymond Dettore Jr., national historian for the Sons of Italy and former president of the Italo-American Club in Providence.On his fourth voyage, Columbus landed in Central America, which is usually considered part of North America. But what if he didn't? What exactly is Dettore implying: that Columbus couldn't have harmed Indians because he explored only Caribbean islands?

News flash: Indians lived throughout the Caribbean region. They interacted with Indians on the mainland. They shared cultures, news, and--alas--diseases. What Columbus started in the Caribbean eventually spread throughout two continents.“I don’t think this is right,” Dettore said. “Columbus was the one that opened up this part of the world to Western civilization.”Yes...so? Opening up this part of the world to Western civilization led to the genocide of Native Americans. If that's not your point, you've missed the point.“Columbus showed that the world was not flat.”OMG...wrong. Most educated Europeans knew the world was round in 1492.

This comment tells us that Dettore isn't trying to promote the truth. He's trying to promote his pro-Western, anti-Indian mythology. "Columbus was the Great Discoverer. He proved to the naysayers that the world was round. He brought God and civilization to the New World." Etc.“I know there is a question of whether the Vikings came first, but if you landed a man on the moon and kept it secret, it doesn’t count.”I don't think there's any question that the Vikings explored North America's northeast edge and settled briefly in Newfoundland. Many Europeans may not have known of these explorations, but that doesn't mean anyone kept them secret. Should we celebrate their ignorance of what their fellow Europeans accomplished?

To use Dettore's analogy, if you accidentally land on the moon while aiming for Mars and kill some moon men, you don't celebrate your mistakes or their deaths. You regret and mourn them.Anthony Baratta, president of the Sons of Italy’s Commission for Social Justice, said from the organization’s headquarters in Chicago that revisionist histories have cast an unfair pall over Columbus’ deeds.

“We respect the fact that Columbus discovered America.”That's not a "fact," since Indians discovered and settled the Americas thousands of years earlier. Assuming you don't believe that Indians originated there, as their creation myths state. What Columbus did was accidentally bump into a continent he didn't know existed.

Should we also celebrate Galileo because he "discovered" gravity? Think of all the great things that "discovery" led to: skyscrapers, airplanes, rockets and satellites, etc. Would any of them have been possible without Galileo?

I think we're on to something here: a new Italian hero for the Sons of Italy to venerate. How about if we boost your fragile egos with Galileo Day instead of Columbus Day? I don't think anyone will object to that.

What the history books say“My history books told me he was very friendly to the American Indians. In 1492, on his first voyage, he made friends with the Taino Indians on Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic.Columbus may have been friendly with the Tainos on his first voyage. Well, except for the ones he kidnapped and took back to Spain. In his subsequent voyages, he became a tyrant who did his best to subjugate the Indians.“He built a fort, Navidad, and left a crew of 40 there. He went back to Spain. When he returned in 1493, his men were slaughtered, massacred, by one of the Taino tribes. That’s when he began to have differences with the Indians.”Oh my freakin' God...are you serious, Baratta? Let's dispose of this garbage, shall we?

1) Building a fort on land already occupied is a moral crime and probably a legal one too. If Spain had any laws against "foreigners" occupying its territory (e.g., the Moors in Iberia), it was violating its own laws in the Americas.

2) How many crimes did Columbus's crew of 40 commit before the Indians responded with force? How much did they rape, pillage, and kill before the Indians were provoked into fighting back? FYI, it isn't a "massacre" if criminals commit capital crimes against your people and you execute them for it.Baratta said that as a result of the massacre Columbus sent 500 native prisoners of war back to Spain, where they were sold as slaves.3) "Prisoners of war"? Did I miss Spain's declaration of war on the Native population? When and where did Spain make this declaration?

4) Were these "500 Native prisoners" all guilty of assaulting the fort? Did they even come from the same tribe(s) that assaulted the fort? How exactly did Columbus identify these 500 Indians and establish their guilt?

It's too bad the Geneva Conventions weren't in force so we could point out how barbaric the Spaniards' actions were. Taking "prisoners of war" without hearings and selling them into slavery without trials...sounds like something Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, or the USSR would do.“That’s what the Spanish did back then,” he said. “That’s where the mystique and misinterpretation of what Columbus has done has evolved into. The stories and the racist facts about Columbus were really false.”I think we can agree on one thing: That’s what the Spanish did back then. They killed or enslaved the Indians who were only defending their homeland against a foreign invasion.“This was a patriotic holiday,” he said.Yeah, because it's "patriotic" to celebrate the victory of "civilized" white men like us over "savage" Indians like them. I guess "real Americans" are more like the Sons of Italy than like the Natives who protest Columbus Day celebrations.“I don’t know why the faculty would have chosen this route, because if you really read about Columbus, he brought Christianity to America, brought inventions including the wheel that would help farmers and American Indians plant their crops and help our country prosper. He should be treated as a hero.”We don't have to "really read" to know Columbus brought Christianity to America. It's patently obvious. The question is, so the hell what? Christianity is no better than any other religion, in case you're too biased to judge your belief systems objectively.

(Some) Native people knew about the wheel. They didn't use it because they didn't have beasts of burden to pull wagons.

In what may be the best evidence of your ignorance, you imply that Indians didn't know anything about farming. In fact, Indian farmers didn't need help planting their crops because they were much better at agriculture than their European contemporaries.

Columbus a hero?“He should be treated as a hero.”Well, I agree we shouldn't equate him with Hitler. Columbus is more of a bumbler who stumbled into his "discovery" and a martinet who presided over a concentration camp. Sort of a brutal combination of Sergeant Schulz and Colonel Klink in Hogan's Heroes.Valentino D. Lombardi, state social justice chairman for the Sons of Italy, said, “I’m surprised, but not shocked, because this has come up at other locations and the Sons of Italy has defended the right to honor Christopher Columbus. We recognized the achievements of a great Renaissance explorer who founded the first European settlement in the New World.”If you exclude the Vikings, again.“It has been said that Columbus matters because after him came millions of Europeans who brought art, music, science, medicine, philosophy and religious principles to America.”"It has been said"...by the ignorant Sons of Italy, you mean.

Indians already had art, music, science, medicine, philosophy, and religious principles, you blithering idiot. That's the point you and your fellow idol worshipers can't seem to grasp.Lombardi added that the organization does not deny that “The Native Americans suffered greatly at the hands of the American government or the Spanish conquistadors or anyone else, but it is untenable to conclude that because of these past injustices the Italian-Americans who want to celebrate Columbus would be denied that right.”You apparently deny that Columbus had anything to do with these injustices. In fact, he was the one who got the ball rolling on genocide, even if he didn't commit genocide himself. That's reason enough not to celebrate him.

You can still celebrate Columbus all you want, Lombardi. The question is whether the university should celebrate this Klink-like conqueror. The answer is no.

Comment:  For more on the subject, see The Myth of Western Superiority.