Italian immigrants were Catholic and were often accused of being too dark-skinned to live as white people in America. Which begs the question–why do we have Columbus Day at all? The answer is that Columbus Day was one part in the complicated process of assimilating immigrants who had little in common with the typical turn of the century American. This year, many of the memes have pointed out that Columbus didn’t land anywhere near what becomes the United States and argue that celebrating him then makes no sense. In fact, South Dakota has celebrated Native American Day/Indigenous Peoples Day since 1993 in response to Native American protests against the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ travels in 1992. This is something that several states, many municipalities, and a variety of colleges, universities, and other entities have already done. Many of the memes argue for dropping Columbus Day as a holiday and replacing it with Indigenous Peoples Day. He was a pretty awful dude, but he didn’t intentionally bring disease to indigenous people. I will note here though that A LOT of memes and videos floating around about Columbus include wrong facts or are presenting a really slanted view of Columbus. There are a host of other memes about the holiday from the funny to the politically pointed. This is one of the more popular:īoth of which make me laugh and make good points about the age of European exploration. If your facebook feed is anything like mine, you are seeing a number of memes about Columbus Day.
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