Another bad idea: renaming Columbus Day

Robert Higgs at cleveland.com reports:

A typically united City Council divided Monday night over a non-binding resolution calling for the city to recognize the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples’ Day rather than Columbus Day.

Councilman Basheer Jones proposed the resolution, saying he wished to recognize that a culture already existed in North America when Italian explorer Christopher Columbus arrived in Oct. 12, 1492.

Council approves most proposed resolutions with little or no comment, but Jones’ proposal struck a nerve with colleagues Matt Zone, a second-generation Italian American, and Mike Polensek, who also is of Italian descent.

Zone spoke for several minutes in opposition to the resolution. He said that he grew up celebrating Columbus Day as a proud symbol of immigration to the United States. And it was a day important to Italian Americans who themselves had to endure bigotry in this country.

“It now is a universal theme with all people who come into this country,” Zone said. “One of the highest honors I ever had was in 2015 when I was the grand marshal in the Columbus Day parade.”

Zone said he had no problem doing something to honor indigenous people, but not at the expense of Columbus Day.

. . .

(Full report is here.) But it’s not about identity politics, in this case Native Americans vs Italians. It’s about using identity politics to push another attempt to erase the history of America. Yes, of course, Native Americans were here before Columbus, but it was the Old World coming to the New World that marked the inception of the early European settlements that led to the founding of the United States.

If you live in Cleveland, find your councilman here. The general phone number for council members is 216.664.2840. Give ‘em a call.

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