Christopher Columbus, Italy, Ethnic Background General Discussion

[ingemann]

Funny story, do you people know why Lucky Leif (son of the murderer Erik, who was son of the murderer Thorvaldr) game Vinland its name, the stories go that a Frankish slave he brought with him found grapes (likely currant), and having inherited the PR talent of his father who named a frozen wasteland Greenland, he named it Wine Land.

[DavidB.]

You seem to understand this, but many (including oddly enough it seems most European posters, despite the fact that the hardcore scene and conventions full of cosplayers certainly exist in Europe too) don't.

In my time on Atlas I've come to understand that there are so many differences between "American thinking" and "European thinking", based on underlying assumptions Europeans aren't likely to discuss among themselves and Americans aren't likely to discuss among themselves because they are so implicit yet so central to our worldviews. It is an extremely interesting phenomenon and it taught me how European my thinking is. At the same time, it leads to tremendous miscommunication on this forum, or I might also say: tremendous disagreement.

And that has nothing to do with hardcore.

[traininthedistance]

Columbus Day comes from a time when white ethnics were still discriminated against. White ethics are not discriminated against anymore.

White ethnics don't EXIST anymore.

You mean white Catholics? In the NY orbit, I still think being Italian has some meaning. It is pretty much gone for the Polish, Irish and of course Germans. Do Greeks count (yes I know not Catholic, but not Orthodox Jewish either, who certainly do have an ethnic identification)?

Friendly reminder that a lot of Hispanics/Latinos check "white" on the Census box.  And, like the "white ethnics" of yesteryear, still aren't fully accepted as American by some– but their children and grandchildren eventually will be.

So, yes, we have plenty of white ethnics.  Go look around the Ironbound in Newark.

(As for the earlier waves, the individual nationalities still have some meaning, even the Irish, but yes of course it's faded over time.  I think Polish identity is more of a thing still in Chicago where there was a larger community than there is in NYC, where we were vastly outnumbered by Italians/Irish.)

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

think of the people who go cosplaying at conventions for another example. I'd imagine they'd think the exact same way.

I don't.