COMMITTEE VOTES TO CHANGE THE NAME OF THE COLUMBUS SCHOOL
In a surprise move, the Medford School Committee moved to change the name of the city’s Columbus School.Obviously, the ALLIANCE will fight that bad decision which was done without transparency. Here is our initial response sent directly to each of the School Committee Members in Medford.
This is what we told the School Committee:
THE ITALIAN AMERICAN ALLIANCE
Many Americans struggle with our nation’s history, and so when the story of Christopher Columbus comes up for discussion, they usually depend upon others.
After all, 1492 was a long time ago.
The motion by School Committee Member Paul Russeau is an example of poor information about Christopher Columbus.
(Ex Convict) Russeau’s shocking narrative of severed hands, raped women and gentle Indians enslaved and worked to death just to slake the white Europeans’ lust for gold is absolute nonsense.
Unfortunately, Russeau probably even believes this –which explains his ill advised motion to change the name of the Columbus School.
We have heard this twisted version of history before. It comes from Howard Zinn’s fake “People’s History of the United States”. Russeault, who has now done incalculable damage to Italian Americans in Medford, obviously doesn’t keep up with modern historical research.
Just last year, Mary Grabar won rave reviews from real historians with her best-selling, “Debunking Howard Zinn – Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America”. Russeau would also have profited from reading Stanford anthropologist Carol Delaney’s “Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem”.
Grabar exposes Howard Zinn as a left-wing Marxist Socialist who deliberately lied. He twisted history to make his point. Grabar herself was astounded to learn of how he changed the entire meaning of whole passages by deliberately leaving out words by the use of ellipsis (…) to mislead his readers.
Despite the recent accusations – Columbus never committed genocide! That is unless you choose to believe that the unintentional clash of microbes is genocide. Genocide must be intentional. It’s what the Turks did to the Armenians and what the Nazis did to the Jews. It’s not the accidental transmission of microbes.
The worst slander is to accuse Columbus of institutionalizing slavery. In fact, Columbus never owned a slave, although slavery was in fashion during his lifetime. What Columbus did do was to enslave a tribe of Caribs who were cannibals. And for this, most natives were relieved.
If the Medford School Committee is serious about presenting the truth, they would be wise to read Grabar and Delaney before rushing to make such a serious school name change.
There’s nothing wrong with admitting a mistake. Zinn’s catechism of lies cites Hitler as no worse than the United States, and war with the Japanese as fueled by American racial prejudice. So is the slanderous characterization of Christopher Columbus.
Without the Great Admiral Christopher Columbus, countless millions of people would never have discovered a land where they could find economic opportunity. Without Columbus millions of other good people might never have discovered a land where they could find refuge from the oppression in their Old Country.
Yes, Christopher Columbus holds special meaning for Italian Americans. It is ironic that at a time of racial sensitivity, the school committee can be so completely insensitive to the feelings of Italian Americans.
Keep the Columbus School. You have reason be proud of the school’s name.
0 comments:
Post a Comment