Should New York City ban Columbus Day?

[tpfkaw]

Ummm...you do realize that Puerto Rico exists right? Not to mention the fact that Dominicans are the largest ethnic group in NYC.

Dominicans love Columbus. And calling one of them an Indio is fighting words.

[YaBoyNY]

Any holiday which doesn't uplift a POC and create a safe space for them should be outlawed.

Hopefully, eventually science can even narrow down whiteness by melanin count, and sterilize those below a certain melanin count

Look, I hate SWJs too but Columbus was a murdering, slave owning pedophile who's only accomplishment was getting lost and accidentally discovering an already inhabited Dominican Republic. There is no reason for him to have a holiday.

I honestly have no real horse in the race but, if something pisses off SJW's, I'll support it. I was raised with the rhyme "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue", and I'm fine with it remaining that way.

Man, you really have it out for SJW's. Did one of them  your girlfriend or something?

[Famous Mortimer]

Well Pol Pot never harmed any Americans so I guess having a "Pol Pot Day" would be be perfectly fine in the US then.

Pol Pot is largely irrelevant, in the grand scheme of things, to the history of the United States, whereas Columbus, by virtue of being the man who helped establish a permanent connection between Europe and the Americas (thus laying the foundation for future exploration and colonisation in the Caribbean and both North and South America), does have some relevance to the history of the United States. Given that the United States is, in many respects, a European country in the Americas, it is actually rather symbolic of this process, begun by Columbus.

Now, if Pol Pot had, say, been instrumental in helping America to win the Cold War, then yes he probably would deserve a 'Pol Pot Day' as you put it.

You feign outrage that anyone would lump all Native Americans together then a post later lump all Europeans together. Weird.

[Figueira]

Yea, cos' this is #1 issue in this country, this issue is so important.

TBH, it's pretty annoying when people dismiss some issues as irrelevant because apparently, there are other issues that require more attention. If we only focused on the one/few issues that you deem most important, everything else would go very poorly. Managing a government properly involves addressing all things that can be improved, not merely dismissing those deemed minor just because they are thought of as such. Just because Columbus Day isn't the most pressing issue in modern society, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the issue completely for no good reason.

Exactly. And besides, the sooner we can get Columbus Day renamed, the sooner we can move on to more important issues after about a week of impotent conservative and racist tears. Simply putting off issues like this until later won't work unless everyone is on board with doing that.

Yes keep figthing the good cause, ignore all those people who suffer from real problems which could be dealt with instead.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

TBH, it's pretty annoying when people dismiss some issues as irrelevant because apparently, there are other issues that require more attention. If we only focused on the one/few issues that you deem most important, everything else would go very poorly. Managing a government properly involves addressing all things that can be improved, not merely dismissing those deemed minor just because they are thought of as such. Just because Columbus Day isn't the most pressing issue in modern society, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the issue completely for no good reason.

Yea you're right, however many social liberal and progressives make this issue and other feminist SJW issues on the headline focusing issues on un-needed conversation of social issues, instead of a real economic conversation and conversation on economic issues and fighting corruption.
[/quote]

Uh, social issues are pretty important for people who aren't white, male, cisgender, sraight, etc.[/quote]

As all the groups who aren't White straight cisgender ablebody Anglo-Saxon Protestant make up a rather clear majority of the American electorate (even if we only include the people who votes), it clearly not "pretty important" to all those people.
[/quote]

Did we have a referendum on this while I wasn't looking?

[Col. Roosevelt]

Any holiday which doesn't uplift a POC and create a safe space for them should be outlawed.

Hopefully, eventually science can even narrow down whiteness by melanin count, and sterilize those below a certain melanin count

Look, I hate SWJs too but Columbus was a murdering, slave owning pedophile who's only accomplishment was getting lost and accidentally discovering an already inhabited Dominican Republic. There is no reason for him to have a holiday.

I honestly have no real horse in the race but, if something pisses off SJW's, I'll support it. I was raised with the rhyme "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue", and I'm fine with it remaining that way.

Man, you really have it out for SJW's. Did one of them  your girlfriend or something?

No, but they're trying to turn my country into a craphole. They're not my countrymen. I'm a white "cis" male, so, of course, in their eyes, I'm evil.

[Figueira]

Any holiday which doesn't uplift a POC and create a safe space for them should be outlawed.

Hopefully, eventually science can even narrow down whiteness by melanin count, and sterilize those below a certain melanin count

Look, I hate SWJs too but Columbus was a murdering, slave owning pedophile who's only accomplishment was getting lost and accidentally discovering an already inhabited Dominican Republic. There is no reason for him to have a holiday.

I honestly have no real horse in the race but, if something pisses off SJW's, I'll support it. I was raised with the rhyme "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue", and I'm fine with it remaining that way.

Man, you really have it out for SJW's. Did one of them  your girlfriend or something?

No, but they're trying to turn my country into a craphole. They're not my countrymen. I'm a white "cis" male, so, of course, in their eyes, I'm evil.

I'm a white cis male SJW, and I don't consider myself evil.

[angus]

Love Columbus Day!  All other holidays as well.  The more the merrier.  Also, I'm all for parades as long as they're not on my street.

My son is off school.  Unfortunately neither my wife nor I are off from work.  I'll take him with me. 

Not sure whether the garbage gets collected.  Monday is normally the day, but when I looked outside only about half the folks on the block put out garbage and recycling bins.  I put mine out just in case, but I won't begrudge them the holiday if they don't come. 

Voted no.  Sure, he was a lousy and incompetent governor of Hispañola, and he proved to be bit tyrannical and bloodthirsty, but to douse a holiday over that is just stupid.  Take 'em when you can get 'em.

¡Viva Colón!

[Badger]

If I were mayor of NYC I'd push for abolishing Columbus Day and a de facto ban by banning any parade permits on it and thus making any such parades "unlawful gatherings".

Well gthen you would be an undemocratic dick

[Col. Roosevelt]

Any holiday which doesn't uplift a POC and create a safe space for them should be outlawed.

Hopefully, eventually science can even narrow down whiteness by melanin count, and sterilize those below a certain melanin count

Look, I hate SWJs too but Columbus was a murdering, slave owning pedophile who's only accomplishment was getting lost and accidentally discovering an already inhabited Dominican Republic. There is no reason for him to have a holiday.

I honestly have no real horse in the race but, if something pisses off SJW's, I'll support it. I was raised with the rhyme "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue", and I'm fine with it remaining that way.

Man, you really have it out for SJW's. Did one of them  your girlfriend or something?

No, but they're trying to turn my country into a craphole. They're not my countrymen. I'm a white "cis" male, so, of course, in their eyes, I'm evil.

I'm a white cis male SJW, and I don't consider myself evil.

You should. After all, you were born with the original sin of white privilege. You have to make amends for it.

[Figueira]

Any holiday which doesn't uplift a POC and create a safe space for them should be outlawed.

Hopefully, eventually science can even narrow down whiteness by melanin count, and sterilize those below a certain melanin count

Look, I hate SWJs too but Columbus was a murdering, slave owning pedophile who's only accomplishment was getting lost and accidentally discovering an already inhabited Dominican Republic. There is no reason for him to have a holiday.

I honestly have no real horse in the race but, if something pisses off SJW's, I'll support it. I was raised with the rhyme "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue", and I'm fine with it remaining that way.

Man, you really have it out for SJW's. Did one of them  your girlfriend or something?

No, but they're trying to turn my country into a craphole. They're not my countrymen. I'm a white "cis" male, so, of course, in their eyes, I'm evil.

I'm a white cis male SJW, and I don't consider myself evil.

You should. After all, you were born with the original sin of white privilege. You have to make amends for it.

Everyone is privileged in one way or another. It doesn't make people "evil" in my opinion.

And just to be clear, I was being a bit facetious when I called myself an SJW, although I do hold some stereotypically "SJW" views.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

If I were mayor of NYC I'd push for abolishing Columbus Day and a de facto ban by banning any parade permits on it and thus making any such parades "unlawful gatherings".

Well gthen you would be an undemocratic dick

I hold Columbus Day parades on the same level as Golden Dawn rallies in Greece. Plus look how they f[inks] things up and inconvenience people with shreds of decency: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Street-Closures-for-Columbus-Day-Parade-331931061.html

[The Free North]

If I was Italian-American I'd be downright disgusted by how people celebrate Columbus Day and associate it with that.

Of course if I was Italian-American I'd be a very different one from most. I wouldn't be Catholic for one (even if raised that way I would have converted.)

As an Italian-American, please stop talking. Honestly, you're just embarrassing yourself at this point.

We get it. We all get it. We all know how much you like the cute little things you like and how everyone else is wrong. Just stop.

[The Free North]

I also love how the mentally challenged moral majority on social media is now making 'creative' snide comments about Columbus Day like they're really taking a tough stance on something.

[Simfan34]

If I were mayor of NYC I'd push for abolishing Columbus Day and a de facto ban by banning any parade permits on it and thus making any such parades "unlawful gatherings".

Well gthen you would be an undemocratic dick

I hold Columbus Day parades on the same level as Golden Dawn rallies in Greece. Plus look how they f[inks] things up and inconvenience people with shreds of decency: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Street-Closures-for-Columbus-Day-Parade-331931061.html

That's literally every parade ever.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

red, is there anyone in history you hate more than Columbus?

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Well Pol Pot never harmed any Americans so I guess having a "Pol Pot Day" would be be perfectly fine in the US then.

As was noted someplace else:

"Sorry, bro, but the blood of "indigenous" people's tastes really good tbh"

[Badger]

If I were mayor of NYC I'd push for abolishing Columbus Day and a de facto ban by banning any parade permits on it and thus making any such parades "unlawful gatherings".

Well gthen you would be an undemocratic dick

I hold Columbus Day parades on the same level as Golden Dawn rallies in Greece. Plus look how they f[inks] things up and inconvenience people with shreds of decency: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Street-Closures-for-Columbus-Day-Parade-331931061.html

That's literally every parade ever.

This. And for that matter why would one ban golden dawn parades in a democratic and free society regardless of how disagreeable their views are?

Of all the things to abrogate the First Amendment over.......

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Whatever white activists might say, the case against Columbus Day isn't aimed at the particular actions of Cristoforo Colombo. The case against Columbus Day is aimed at the fact that he's an unambiguous symbol of the conquest of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, many of whom are American citizens, who deserve a modicum of respect. Again, America is a "multi-nation" state, which is composed of non-indigenous people and various indigenous peoples. This holiday effectively celebrates the forcibly conquest of the later, which is pretty repulsive. Columbus Day simply can't be reconciled with American commitments to the Nez Pearce or the Shoshone or the Crow etc.

Columbus Day controversies may be symbolic but sometimes symbols matter and the attachment to this particular symbol represents the insidious ways that many Americans view the original cultures of this continent, who are either romanticized or treated as barbarians in need of civilizations. They're still alive.

Is Thanksgiving a problem then?

Thanksgiving, in some aspects, might be considered to have a sort of brief shining moment status.

[MasterJedi]

We should rename it mammoth remembrance day for the sad demise of the mammoths that the "indigenous" immigrants from the old country killed off. Remember the victims!

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

We should rename it mammoth remembrance day for the sad demise of the mammoths that the "indigenous" immigrants from the old country killed off. Remember the victims!

so edgy

[politicus]

He isn't exactly wrong, but I fail to see why we should celebrate "Native American Day" in its place either. We should celebrate Lief Erikson day.

Having read some book from my school's library that hadn't been checked out since, like, '73 (it was printed in the 60's), the voyages of the Norse to Greenland, Iceland, and eventually North America sure were somethin', weren't they? Plus, the fact that it is so shrouded in the past makes much better for some national myth than the idiot Columbus, who, had he been correct, would have starved out on the open sea!

It's fascinating to wonder how different history might have turned out without the Little Ice Age blocking access to Greenland and cutting off the Norse colonies there.

They weren't cut off, as much as forgotten because they didn't produce anything valuable enough to trade with them - connected to the fact that they stopped being able to build ships themselves and trade with Inuits further north, whether that was due to a loss of know-how or simply lack of lumber or a combination of those two is unclear. They primarily traded in walrus teeth and skins + polar bear skins (none of which existed in Southern Greenland). The official trade (as registered by the Norwegian authorities) stopped in the 1420s, but there was likely ships going from northern Iceland to around 1450.

Ivory was a rare commodity on the European market in the late medieval era and walrus tooth served as a substitute, but as the Portuguese established direct contact with West Africa prices on walrus tooth plummeted with consumers preferring the real thing and this was likely the end - as climate changes had already made the Norse way of life unsustainable they probably partly left for Iceland, died and mixed into neighboring Inuit communities (Inuits in these areas were markedly more light skinned than their neighbours - and sometimes fair haired - in the late 18th century when this part of Greenland was (re-)colonized. Since all Greenlanders today have some Scandinavian ancestry this is unfortunately impossible to test with DNA-studies.

Danish explorers (or quite possibly Germans in Danish service) Hans Pothorst and Diderik Pinning most likely discovered New Foundland in 1474, but the evidence of this is uncertain and in any case it was never followed through. They also rediscovered Greenland, but at this point there was little commercial interest in this. You need whale oil to become a major commodity for Greenland to become commercially attractive again - the Basques were up there in the late 1500s followed by Dutch and English whalers after the turn of the century. There was simply a century from around 1450-1550, where Greenland was considered too commercially unattractive by even the most intrepid Europeans.

So there is also the possibility of a Dano-Norwegian colonization of eastern Canada.

But I think the main point with both Leif Eriksson and the Pothorst/Pinning expedition is that they landed in barren and inhospitable parts of Canada, which didn't inspire colonization.

Since there was never more than 2-3,000 Norse in Greenland (and always short of lumber for ships) they were unlikely to have the capacity to colonize America themselves, but dependent on some backup from Iceland or Norway, where the narrative of this western land would have needed to be more attractive to lure anyone to finance an expedition.

As a sidenote: The Pinning and Pothorst expedition included a Portuguese navigator and there is an interesting theory that it might have been a Danish-Portuguese joint venture.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I just realized the Columbus Day Parade might be cancelled this year.

I feel like I used a monkey's paw. I wanted it abolished, but not like this.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Isn't the NYC Columbus Day Parade a celebration of Italian-American contributions and culture?

Moreover, I don't think you can "Black Out" a specific day of the year for parades/gatherings without running into some pretty serious First Amendment issues.  

To say nothing of New York's Dominican population:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Christopher_Columbus

The Order of Christopher Columbus (Spanish: Orden Heráldica de Cristóbal Colón) is an order of the Dominican Republic. It was established on 21 July 1937. The Head of State confers the order, by advice of the council of the order, both to civilians and military personnel to recognize services.

This order honors the life and works of Christopher Columbus firstly and secondly recognize services to the Dominican Republic or humanitarian services and distinction in the arts and sciences.

If we're going to have Political Correctness, let's talk about the Human Sacrifice conducted by both the Incans, Mayans, and Aztecs:

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2019/11/01/largest-child-sacrifice-graveyard-strikes-huge-blow-to-native-american-innocence-myth-n70100

Two hundred and fifty skeletons of children between the ages of 4 and 14 have been unearthed at Huanchaco, Peru, in what experts say is likely the world’s largest child-sacrifice site. Huanchaco is a site of the Chimú culture (1200-1400), a predecessor to the mighty Inca Empire, which also carried out child sacrifices.

“This is the biggest site where the remains of sacrificed children have been found,” the excavation’s chief archaeologist, Feren Castillo, told AFP in August. “There isn’t another like it anywhere else in the world.”

Christopher Columbus is a Hero in most of Central and South America to this day.  Indeed, as Charles Krauthammer once pointed out, Hispanic America is Columbus's legacy.

Columbus was who he was.  I'm not unmindful of his faults, and he was, arguably, something of a grifter at points in his life.  This hardly makes him unique in history.  I'm not an apologist for the Conquistadors, but let's stop making Indigenous Peoples something they were not, and recognize Columbus's role in history, and what it led to, good and bad.  And, while we're at it, let's remind Howard Zinn that he's anti-American on a number of levels, while we resist the rewriting of American History to reflect the anti-American sentiments of Zinn and Company.

[Former President tack50]

New York City should stop appropiating my culture /s

[Figueira]

Isn't the NYC Columbus Day Parade a celebration of Italian-American contributions and culture?

Moreover, I don't think you can "Black Out" a specific day of the year for parades/gatherings without running into some pretty serious First Amendment issues.  

To say nothing of New York's Dominican population:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Christopher_Columbus

The Order of Christopher Columbus (Spanish: Orden Heráldica de Cristóbal Colón) is an order of the Dominican Republic. It was established on 21 July 1937. The Head of State confers the order, by advice of the council of the order, both to civilians and military personnel to recognize services.

This order honors the life and works of Christopher Columbus firstly and secondly recognize services to the Dominican Republic or humanitarian services and distinction in the arts and sciences.

If we're going to have Political Correctness, let's talk about the Human Sacrifice conducted by both the Incans, Mayans, and Aztecs:

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2019/11/01/largest-child-sacrifice-graveyard-strikes-huge-blow-to-native-american-innocence-myth-n70100

Two hundred and fifty skeletons of children between the ages of 4 and 14 have been unearthed at Huanchaco, Peru, in what experts say is likely the world’s largest child-sacrifice site. Huanchaco is a site of the Chimú culture (1200-1400), a predecessor to the mighty Inca Empire, which also carried out child sacrifices.

“This is the biggest site where the remains of sacrificed children have been found,” the excavation’s chief archaeologist, Feren Castillo, told AFP in August. “There isn’t another like it anywhere else in the world.”

Christopher Columbus is a Hero in most of Central and South America to this day.  Indeed, as Charles Krauthammer once pointed out, Hispanic America is Columbus's legacy.

Columbus was who he was.  I'm not unmindful of his faults, and he was, arguably, something of a grifter at points in his life.  This hardly makes him unique in history.  I'm not an apologist for the Conquistadors, but let's stop making Indigenous Peoples something they were not, and recognize Columbus's role in history, and what it led to, good and bad.  And, while we're at it, let's remind Howard Zinn that he's anti-American on a number of levels, while we resist the rewriting of American History to reflect the anti-American sentiments of Zinn and Company.

Ah yes, the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca (who practiced human sacrifice, unlike medieval Europeans who never did anything bad ever), noted for being the only groups of people in the Americas before Columbus arrived and rescued everyone, bringing sunshine and roses everywhere.