New Inductee in our Hall of Shame
Mayor Mark Baker of South Fulton, Georgia, drafted a resolution to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day. In the mayor’s statement he said the day “recognizes the tremendous and unique contributions of the people who inhabited the United States of America prior to its colonization.”
The mayor stated that these people should be acknowledged because they are neglected and voiceless. Actually, each year the indigenous people of America seem to have quite a loud voice and gain a platform that permits them to misrepresent facts without challenge, denigrating one of the most significant accomplishments in history – the opening of the Americas to the settlement by Europeans. Mayor Baker is yet the latest in a group of pandering politicians who when they see their name in lights, become blinded by the facts.
The mayor showed his true colors by not simply creating a day for Indigenous People, but by taking away Columbus Day, which is a National holiday. If your cause, Mr. Mayor, is the slight of history against Native Americans, then choose another day!!! While you are at it, please tell us what the tremendous and unique contributions of the group were. First of all, changing from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day is not a change of name, it is a change of everything that the celebration of Columbus stands for. It is a denial of the facts of history. Underpinning this latest insult to the Italian American people is an attempt to selectively judge the great men and women of the past by the standards of today. This does not work and has been demonstrated by fallen regimes of the past (Nazi Germany for one), changing the facts to meet the objectives is a cancer on society.
At the last census, South Fulton had 185 residents who were of American Indian decent, out of a population of 95,158. This is clearly a deliberate attempt to paint Christopher Columbus in a poor light and an insult to every Italian American in the United States. Mayor Baker might as well hang up a sign on the town’s borders proclaiming “Italian Americans Not Welcome!” He is our newest inductee into our Hall of Shame.
