Good one!

Last edited Fri Jul 24, 2020, 04:27 PM - Edit history (1)

You know what? Christopher Columbus doesn't represent the "Italians" any more than I do. I'm of German-Irish ancestry by the way, and my American roots go back to pre-Civil War.

It's a historic fact that Columbus sailed for Spain (not Italy) over 500 years ago. He captured natives and enslaved them for one reason or another. He introduced slavery, theft of native artifacts, fatal diseases, and forced religious conversion and cultural conversion on the natives of the West Indies.

Maybe Columbus' statue does deserve to come down, but even so the Italian-Americans have decided to take this all the wrong way. Someone is instigating Italian-Americans to jump in and claim the BLM movement is now their "enemy." That's hogwash and it's also race-baiting.

Statues of Columbus--just like monuments to the 10 Commandments--were put up with public money to curry favor by politicians. Where are the statues ? of great Italian scientists, like Galileo, Luigi Galvani [galvanic], Amedeo Avogadro [famous number], Alessandro Volta [volts!], Giovanni Battista Venturi, Enrico Fermi, Salvador Luria--hundreds more?

Explorers of new lands and consequent enslavement of peoples should not be given more honor than explorers in science, the nature of the Universe, and medical understandings.

a prominent stretch of road that runs through Grant Park, across Michigan Avenue, to the Hilton Hotel. That would be referring to Italo Balbo, the Italian Fascist. Two aldermen (including my own) had tried (but lost, due to curious public opposition) to change it to Ida B. Wells Drive, after the noted black journalist. They did get Congress Parkway renamed Ida B. Wells Drive (apparently Congress has fewer advocates than Italian fascists do). Go figure.

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Last August, in the wake of the racist violence in Charlottesville, downtown aldermen Sophia King (Second) and Brendan Reilly (42nd) called for renaming Balbo Drive. The street honors Italo Balbo, a leader of the Blackshirts, the paramilitary wing of Italy's National Fascist Party, who later became Mussolini's air commander and governor of colonized Libya. The aldermen blasted Balbo as a brutal racist.

"We have inherited a legacy that honors and memorializes an individual who embraced white supremacy and who was part of the fascist onslaught which sought to take over the world," said Alderman King in a statement at the time. "Balbo is a symbol of racial and ethnic supremacy, and in this day and age we need positive symbols. It's high time we removed these symbols of oppression and anti-democracy from our city."

Last month King and Reilly introduced an ordinance that would have renamed the drive after Ida B. Wells, a former slave, journalist, anti-lynching activist, and woman's suffrage advocate.

https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2018/06/26/street-honoring-fascist-balbo-to-remain-after-aldermen-cave

I hadn't heard about this one.

I get that Italian-Americans are proud of their heritage, and proud of serving in the US military, etc. But don't they realize the shit that's being thrown these days? They're falling for all this race-baiting, or so it seems.

Italians experienced terrible racism in this country including mass lynching, having their culture stolen, and laws passed to prohibit Italian immigration.

Social workers were sent to Italian homes to Americanized Italian children. We were placed in interment camps during WWII. Even Joe DiMaggio's parents! Our government sent a message to those Italian immigrants!

In fact, please name me ONE positive depiction of an Italian American in the media today. We are still portrayed as mafia and thugs or stupid louts.

Columbus Day was an apology to Italian Americans.

I suggest you watch Pane Amaro. It explains a lot.

"Historians argue Columbus was actually Jewish. Linguistic traits in his writings led them to believe Columbus was raised learning Ladino, a hybrid form of Castilian Spanish, comparable to Yiddish, which was spoken by Spain’s Sephardic Jewish community. They believe there is ample evidence to support their conclusions, including the existence of a Hebrew blessing, “with God’s help,” on all but one of Columbus’ letters to another son, Diego."

https://www.biography.com/news/christopher-columbus-heritage-nationality

FYI.

I don't mean anything Anti-Semitic, but the response was specifically for the Italian ancestry comments. It was a new factoid to me, and I wanted to share it. I found it interesting that there is a Jewish community in Spain that he possibly came from. That is all.

Shalom y'all!

Jewish? Is that like a little Presbyterian-ish?
Where did this weird -ish suffix come from? We do have redish, yellowish, etc. but not German-ish, French ish. OK Spanish

Racism to Italian Americans, you should really stop.

The Irish made Italians lives much harder than they needed to be.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has Christopher Columbus statues removed from Chicago parks overnight

https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-chicago-christopher-columbus-statue-grant-park-lori-lightfoot-20200724-2hsbobbt7ndmpmkgyh6vfl7cvq-story.html

By Gregory Pratt, Peter Nickeas and Armando L. Sanchez


Chicago Tribune |Jul 24, 2020 at 7:16 AM


Workers remove the Christopher Columbus statue from Chicago's Grant Park during the early morning hours of July 24, 2020. (Armando L. Sanchez)
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Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered the statues of Christopher Columbus removed from Chicago’s Grant and Arrigo parks overnight, in part to avoid another high-profile confrontation between police and protesters like the one that happened last week.

Not all Italian American leaders in Chicago are on board with the decision, but it has received the blessing of some groups, sources said. By taking the statues down, Lightfoot may draw criticism from those who believe she caved to activist demands.

Later Friday morning, the mayor’s office released a statement saying that she had both statues “temporarily removed ... until further notice.”

“This step is about an effort to protect public safety and to preserve a safe space for an inclusive and democratic public dialogue about our city’s symbols,” the statement said. “In addition, our public safety resources must be concentrated where they are most needed throughout the city, and particularly in our South and West Side communities.”



Lightfoot’s abrupt move in the dark of night was an about-face for the mayor, who has opposed taking down statues of the Italian explorer on the grounds that it would be erasing history. The mayor’s office statement Friday morning said that the city would soon announce “a formal process to assess each of the monuments, memorials, and murals across Chicago’s communities, and develop a framework for creating a public dialogue to determine how we elevate our city’s history and diversity.”
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