Statue of Christopher Columbus in New Haven. In 2017, the statue was vandalized before Columbus Day, with red paint splashed on the statue and the words "kill the colonizer" spray-painted along its base.
The statue was removed on June 24, 2020.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Has Connecticut been more Balkanized or less so by Groton's decision to replace its observance of Columbus Day with a holiday that will be both Italian Heritage Day and Indigenous Peoples Day?
Columbus is now considered politically incorrect for having helped to open the Western Hemisphere to the European exploration and colonization that displaced the hemisphere's original inhabitants, who had spent hundreds of years displacing each other without European interference. Political correctness lately has elevated them to the "noble savages" of old romantic literature.
But a century ago Columbus was a worldwide hero, and since he was Italian he was appropriated for a national holiday apologizing for the scorn that had been heaped on the Italian immigrants of recent decades, as scorn had been heaped on the Irish immigrants before them and even then was being heaped on Jews.
So in Groton and other places Italian Heritage Day will be what Columbus Day was meant to be all along, more a sop to people of Italian descent than a tribute to the great navigator. Meanwhile the descendants of the inhabitants displaced long ago by the Europeans are getting Indigenous Peoples Day, also as an apology for the abuse their ancestors took, as if most people in the United States now aren't just as "indigenous" as anyone with "indigenous" ancestors.
Why must the country keep patronizing ethnicity? While people may gain much identity from their ethnicity, no one has earned anything by it. It is simply bequeathed to them and they deserve no credit for it any more than anyone should be disparaged for it. But politicians love to pander on the basis of ethnicity, especially when they have little to say about anything that matters.
It is 2½ centuries since the national charter declared that all men are created equal. Lately the charter seems to have been amended to add that, as George Orwell wrote, some are more equal than others.
The pandering to people of Italian and "indigenous" descent as if they deserve an apology or special recognition of their acceptance is especially silly in Connecticut. The state has the country's largest percentage of people of Italian descent and two of its three largest Indian casinos, which enjoy lucrative monopolies bestowed on the premise that today's reconstituted tribes are owed tribute for the wars lost by their ancestors nearly four centuries years ago. Apparently the fantastic wealth given to the tribes by the state, much of that wealth being extracted from people who are far more oppressed than the proprietors of the casinos ever were, isn't apology enough. Supposedly a special holiday is needed too.
But there is already a holiday that celebrates everyone in the country: Independence Day, July 4. It marks the supreme principle of equality under the law. When will that ever be enough?
For that matter, when will high school sports teams and their followers acknowledge that mascots drawn from an ethnic group -- particularly those drawn from Indians -- constitute stereotyping and that stereotyping ethnic groups is offensive?
That has yet to dawn on school systems in Windsor, Canton, Killingly and Derby, though most towns have replaced their Indian mascots, and state law penalizes use of such mascots by withholding financial aid drawn from the Indian casinos.
Windsor and Canton remain the "Warriors," which may sound ambiguous but is not, since the teams formerly used Indian imagery with the name. Killingly's teams are the "Redmen" and "Red Gals," a reference to skin color, also confirmed by past use of Indian imagery. Derby still gets away with "Red Raiders" because it has the endorsement of a minor tribe, the Schaghticokes, which long has been trying to curry favor with palefaces in hope of winning casino rights.
The stereotype here is undeniable -- that of ferocity and brutality. No team calls itself the Fighting Bunnies.
State government's financial incentives to replace Indian mascots haven't finished the job. Such mascots should be forthrightly outlawed by the next session of the General Assembly.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
