Once upon a time in the mists of the not-too-distant past Chicago celebrated four holidays with parades and other commemorations: St. Patrick’s Day for Chicago’s Irish population, Pulaski Day for its Polish population, Columbus Day for Chicago’s Italians, and Martin Luther King’s Birthday for Chicago’s black population. There were others but those were the biggies. Pandering? Heck, yes.
Now the Chicago Tribune reports it’s goodbye, Columbus:
Columbus Day will no longer be observed in Chicago Public Schools — and the group behind the city’s annual Columbus Day parade is already pushing to reverse that decision.
“This is a slap in the face of the more than 500,000 Italian Americans in Chicago, and the 135 million Italian Americans worldwide,” said Sergio Giangrande, president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, in a statement provided to the Tribune.
Giangrande said the group “is challenging CPS’s decision and has mounted a campaign to reverse this action.â€
Following similar moves in other school districts and cities, the Chicago Board of Education voted Wednesday to drop Columbus’ name from the October school holiday in favor of an observance of Indigenous Peoples Day.
This, too, is pandering but for the life of me I can’t tell to whom. Chicago actually has a substantial population of Native Americans but it’s closer to 65,000 than 500,000. There are other populations who have like numbers—Chinese, South Asians, Filipinos, and so on. There are probably more Lithuanians in Chicago than that.
Just a few angry people.
When my wife complains about Columbus day I appease her by telling her he actually died in debtors prison. Says,,,, Good!
We have a new very liberal mayor, she’s decided we are going to pay for sex re-assignment treatments for city employees. At last!
You can’t make everybody happy. Just as an example the “Native American” terminology is controversial even among the tribes. Referring to the individual tribes would be better. There are quite a few alternatives–“Native Americans”, “Indians”, “First Peoples” (from Canada) but you won’t make everybody happy.
They’re pandering to the wokerati and the twittermob. Italians are just too white nowadays.
The entire thing is predicated on the obviously false assumption that you can make people who are never happy unless they’re unhappy happy.
Most Native Americans prefer to be called Indians.
Just like most Americans from Central and South America prefer to be called Latinos or Latinas rather than Latinx (they’d rather be referred to as from their countries of origin, but people aren’t mind readers).
Again, it’s the SJWs driving these appellations, not ordinary people. Because they’re so hiply woke. Gotta prove their wokeness bonafides to their friends and followers.
Vanguardism.
McDonalds and other fast food places found that out earlier. When they tried to placate their enemies with various ‘woke’ additions to their menus, only to have the attacks redoubled. When people want you dead or destroyed, they ain’t gonna meet you halfway.
Wokerati Laity.
They probably don’t know most Natives root FOR the Redskins.
Meh. I am having a hard seeing why pandering to Italians is better than pandering to another group. Or vice versa.
Steve
Because 500,000 is a sizeable voting bloc but 65,000 isn’t.
Bah. I’m with steve. That’s why I’m filing suit to demand a holiday and parade – The Private Equity Guys Parade.
Tell me you are woke and with me, me brothers. The injustice can no longer be tolerated.
I think that has a lot of potential Drew. You could have a couple of giant champagne fountains pulled by teams of Porsches, Bentleys and and a Bugatti or two. Guys in $50,000 suits tossing out cans of caviar to the crowd. We could have helicopters come and drop money on you guys. You guys could finally hold your heads high and gain the respect you deserve.
Steve
I couldn’t agree more, steve. You, sir, are woke.
I’m of Scottish heritage and spent some time doing heritage activities when I was younger. I’ve never seen a parade or day specifically for the Scottish – when I was in a bagpipe band we just attached ourselves to St. Patrick’s day and played More Irish tunes.