Columbus Day Renamed
(Published by the Providence Journal 4-09)

Dear Editor,

I write in reference to the article in the Journal issue of 04-14-09 by Edward Achorn entitled: “Christopher Columbus wasn’t all bad.”

I have thought for a number of years that Columbus Day should rather be called “La Dia de la Raza,” as do the Latin Americans. Though the day is associated with Columbus, it celebrates the start of the Spanish Race (or people) in the New World. In North America, we should call it, in English, The Day of the Race, and it should indicate the beginning of the Anglo Race (people) in the New World. It is a cultural term, and is not racial, ethnic or national. You cannot undo history, and we in America are culturally Anglo, whatever our ethnicity, ideology, religion or cultural subsets.

If the Brown University faculty, though, wishes to attempt to undo history with a papered-over, fey name for Columbus Day, and thereby commit the academic sin of presentism (the mistake of judging people of the past by present standards), then they should change the name of their university itself, as the Brown founding family is documented to have profited from the slave trade. I had always assumed that hindsight was perfect, but the Brown faculty has proven that hindsight can be as blind as foresight!

I think Brown University should rename itself Metacom U. Or, to be really trendy and politically correct, to rename it: Barack Hussein Obama University. It would be an improvement.

T.R. Catanzarite
Riverside