Church of St Mary & St Andrew
Our lady of Lourdes Mission

May 5, 2021

New York City Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007

Esteemed Members of the Department of Education:

As New York State Chaplain of the Order Sons and Daughters of Italy in America, I am outraged by the decision of New York School Chancellor Meisha Ross and the New York City Department of Education to abruptly and without any discussion cancel Columbus Day in New York and replace it with Indigenous People’s Day.

We have been witnessing the systemic destruction of the legacy and the memory of Christopher Columbus for some time now, and I declare this must stop and it must stop now.

I am amazed that so many people are willing to accept as factual the lies disseminated about Columbus by people with no credentials and no facts but only agendas, without so much as an attempt to verify the accusations against him. Even a basic reading of the historical facts will vindicate Columbus and prove that he was not a racist, never owned slaves, did not commit genocide, and did not steal land from the natives, as the current revisionist historical tirade asserts. Like all of us, Columbus was not perfect, but he is far from the evil villain that he has lately been accused of being; furthermore; people have a right to their good name even in death, and the decision of Meisha Ross to buy the arguments of these revisionists without consulting historical facts is a vicious insult to the memory of the man who made the ultimate founding of our great nation of the United States of America possible. 

I am perfectly in favor of celebrating a day in honor of the indigenous people of America, but not at the expense of Columbus Day. The United Nations has declared August 9th Indigenous People’s Day worldwide. The answer to the problem is simple: declare August 9th Indigenous People’s Day and keep October 12th as Columbus Day. The suggestion to change the name to “Italian American Heritage Day and Indigenous People’s Day” so as to avoid insulting Italian Americans is unacceptable. In doing so, this makes New York City complicit in the false, revisionist history surrounding Christopher Columbus that has emanated from individuals with an agenda, thus sharing in their guilt of those who revile Columbus for their own reasons and with no historical facts to support them.

This decision also sets a terrible precedent for the future. Who will be the next person to be vilified and have his/her memory tarnished and celebration removed? By caving in so readily to the easily disseminated but never validated lies about Columbus, they are setting up a dangerous slippery slope of destruction of anyone someone holds in esteem. Anyone who doesn’t like any figure or the group they represent can then easily spread a bunch of lies about that person and have his/her memory destroyed. When we begin to make decisions based on the emotions created in people by the hysteria of accusations without any facts to back them up, we are in danger of yielding to mob role and anarchy. When no historical evidence is presented but only fabricated accusations that rely on blaming someone such as Columbus for atrocities created by some who came after him, we can in effect remove every figure from a place in our esteem, leaving the world with no heroes. I pity a world when we have no one we can honor.

We don’t always honor people for their upright moral character or their lifestyle. As Catholics we do that with our saints. Honoring historical figures does not imply that we approve of everything they said or did, but that he or she accomplished something that has benefitted those who came after him. Columbus’ discovery of America, even if accidental, opened up the way to exploration of the New World that ultimately resulted in the creation of our great nation of the United States of America. Sure, mistakes were made along the way and subsequently; all peoples are guilty of errors and sins, but if we only view the mistakes and sins and not the contributions and the virtues that also accompanied them, we create a pessimistic and fatalistic society that is doomed to collapse under its own guilt.

By all means, create an Indigenous People’s Day, but by no means do it at the expense of Columbus Day, which ends up villainizing Columbus and insulting Italian Americans.
I await the good news of the restoration of Columbus Day in the New York City schools.

Sincerely in Christ,

Rev. Andrew P. Carrozza, New York State Chaplain
Order Sons and Daughters of Italy in America

cc: Mayor Bill DeBlasio, Governor Andrew Cuomo

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