Opposition to taking down the Columbus statue in Downtown Syracuse is not limited to Italian-Americans alone, but every Central New Yorker who wants to preserve Western culture within the vast and ever changing mosaic of American life. If we follow the logic that Columbus, by discovering the Americas, was somehow responsible for later atrocities visited upon Indigenous peoples by European powers, might we make the same argument that the Jesuit Fathers who canoed down from Quebec to the shores of Onondaga Lake, paved the way for European expansion into Central New York. Moreover, that the Jesuits and those who followed in their wake, likely robbed local Indigenous peoples of their culture, religion, land, and way of life. Given this, would it be a stretch for local politicians to somehow demand that LeMoyne College be renamed, since Father LeMoyne, the school’s namesake, was party to this ‘atrocity‘? I pose this argument to illustrate the folly we are currently experiencing. I hope I haven’t started us down the road to yet another cancel culture cause. That’s not my intent. But where, oh where, does it end?
Art. History. Heritage.
