Discover a New Land Today!
Happy Columbus Day! Instead of sitting at home wasting your free day today, I encourage you to "discover" new lands and wealth today. Create your own flag and travel to new lands, claiming them for yourself. Cross the city border into the unchartered lands beyond and subdue the savages beyond who are too dumb to work public transportation. Ignore existing land beliefs and rules of governing. Go enslave some white people and kill pregnant women. Demand that they get you some bling and cut off their appendages if they return empty-handed.
Be a great man! This is what today is about!
Most of all, once you have killed most of the other natives of your area, establish hateful, bizarre entry laws to prevent their descendants from setting up shop in the lands you've discovered!
(This is satire, please don't take it literally. Don't say I shouldn't write this--I'm not the one who is glorifying the above acts with a day of celebration.)
My first Columbus day event was on the U of I campus. We were in front of the Illini Union and I was holding a sign that said, "Celebrate Genocide!" The College Republicans were counter-demonstrating next to us. They were brave in a way--even though they had the majority, pro-genocide perspective, there were only a dozen or so of them (all white) and a huge mixed crowd of anti-Columbus Day demostrators.
I smiled at them and pointed at my sign giving a thumbs-up sign. One of them shouted at me, "If you don't like it, go back where you come from!" It was neither the first nor the last time I've heard that brilliant argument leveled towards me. My smiled broadened.
"They celebrate Columbus Day in Pittsburgh, too!" I explained.
This is one of those issues I don't understand the schism at all. Columbus' own diary explains his thinking and the atrocities he inflicted on the Native Americans. He did some courageous things, and he also killed millions of innocent people. That doesn't qualify for a day of national celebration in my book. If it does in yours, please explain--I'd love to hear.
Be a great man! This is what today is about!
Most of all, once you have killed most of the other natives of your area, establish hateful, bizarre entry laws to prevent their descendants from setting up shop in the lands you've discovered!
(This is satire, please don't take it literally. Don't say I shouldn't write this--I'm not the one who is glorifying the above acts with a day of celebration.)
My first Columbus day event was on the U of I campus. We were in front of the Illini Union and I was holding a sign that said, "Celebrate Genocide!" The College Republicans were counter-demonstrating next to us. They were brave in a way--even though they had the majority, pro-genocide perspective, there were only a dozen or so of them (all white) and a huge mixed crowd of anti-Columbus Day demostrators.
I smiled at them and pointed at my sign giving a thumbs-up sign. One of them shouted at me, "If you don't like it, go back where you come from!" It was neither the first nor the last time I've heard that brilliant argument leveled towards me. My smiled broadened.
"They celebrate Columbus Day in Pittsburgh, too!" I explained.
This is one of those issues I don't understand the schism at all. Columbus' own diary explains his thinking and the atrocities he inflicted on the Native Americans. He did some courageous things, and he also killed millions of innocent people. That doesn't qualify for a day of national celebration in my book. If it does in yours, please explain--I'd love to hear.
posted by Xian Franzinger Barrett at 2:05 PM
2 Comments:
uh. native americans came from asia. he should go back to where he came from. asians were here before whites were.
Yeah, well, I'm super pro-immigration. I don't even mind immigrants "taking jobs". I just mind immigrations killing the people living here.
I don't believe in racial profiling. But for those who do, what does it mean for racial profiling models when more than 99% of Americans killed by forcful invaders have been killed by whites?
(I realize that that's disputable depending on who you count as "Americans", but it's certainly true if you count Native Americans.)
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