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antp121 t1_it7vb45 wrote

Shit they had a whole parade. I’m Italian American but I do not see this fascination with Columbus.

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tcbafd t1_it88r3n wrote

I make fun of my Italian friends by letting them know they don't have many options.

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NeitherPot t1_it8r6g6 wrote

Funny, that’s how I make fun of my male friends

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Blecher_onthe_Hudson t1_it90tld wrote

It's all about ethnic pride. In the early 20th century you had this huge influx of Southern European immigrants into a country created under a Hegemony of WASPs. They wanted to express that they too had a representative in the creation of this country and settled upon good old Chris, who had no idea where he was till the day he died.

Yeah he was a racist piece of shit, and as such was a perfectly representative man of his time. Cancel culture demands to be fed....

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gschoppe t1_it9g5lb wrote

He was not a "man of his time". He was investigated and arrested for his barbaric rule of Hispaniola, and shipped back to Spain for trial, where his fame and rich connections got him acquitted.

It took a LOT to get arrested for your treatment of natives in the early 1500s, and Columbus was MUCH worse than most people realize.

Using and selling 10 yr olds as sex slaves, and cutting the hands off anyone who didn't deliver a specific gold quota, WITHOUT even checking if that amount of gold existed first was never "normal for its time".

Besides all that, whenever someone calls barbarism "normal for its time", they always seem to ignore the opinions of those being oppressed... It certainly wasn't "normal" for the Taino people, who refused to grow crops and committed suicide by eating casava poison to escape Columbus' rule of terror.

It's like saying "sure, he was a serial killer, but that's pretty common, according to the authors of 'Serial Killers Monthly'."

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