Rob Rogers for October 13, 2020

Really gonna be a shame not to have the NYC Columbus Day parade complete with the mob controlled concrete trucks. No lie – if you’ve never been.

As an American Indian, I can assert, with some degree of positivity, that Christopher Columbus (or Amerigo Vespucci, or even Eric the Red) did not “discover” America.

By the same token, I did not “discover” England or Germany when I traveled there with my parents in the early 1950s!

My people “discovered” the Americas thousands of years ago when we crossed the land bridge between Asia and the Americas.

A few years back I was in Rome looking at the ceiling of a basilica which was completely covered in gold. I was told that gold was brought back in 1493 by Columbus. In just one year he brought back that much gold and more, using the native people as slaves. I sat there and instead of being impressed, was disgusted.

As an Italian-American, I am perfectly happy with this. Even a cursory reading of Columbus’ career should reveal to anyone that he was a horrible human being, who had a hugely negative impact on the way Europeans engaged with the peoples in the Americas. I can think of lots of Italians I would rather honor.

It may seem just a matter of semantics, but how you use words matter — to your thinking ability and to getting across the message you actually WANT to get across. Colonialism, yes. Racism, no. Neither Spain nor any other European country cared WHO was in the way of the New World Goodies, the Old Worlds Goodies, the Roman Goodies or any other goodies; it was just a matter of what it would take to get them. You might as well say Hannibal, Alexander, Genghis Khan, the Huns, Vandals and Goths were racist. Geez!

This is a stretch, in several ways. Columbus wasn’t expecting to find a continent blocking his route to Asia, he did not lead bands of Europeans setting or conquering this continent, and it is unfortunate that the peoples already on the continent were susceptible to European diseases.

Instead of destroying those exploiters’ statues, I think it would be appropriate to build a “Hall of Shame” to display them.

Very well done Rob ♥♥

Nicely portrayed, Mr. Rogers!

Make sure to remove the base . . .

It’s also been proven without a dought that people came to this continent by raft from the westward lands.

A very short summary of what actually happened, including how the current version of the story started.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8PQXiJiLOY

Are they going to rename the city in Ohio?

I wish we had a different term for American Indians, not the misnomer that should properly be applied to the actual Indians from, you know, India. “Native American” doesn’t cut it, because anybody who was born here (like fishbelly-white me) is by definition a native of America. “Indigenous peoples” isn’t bad, and Canada uses “first nations”. Ethnographers use the shorthand “Amerind”, which trips more readily off the tongue but isn’t widely known.

This seems like less of a social problem than trying to find an appropriate term for Black people, but it’s much along the same lines.

I long for the day when we can just say “people” or “citizens” and get no more hung up on whether they’re tabbies or calicos than cats are.

“Feather or Dot”… for “Indians”… Ha