New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is shamefully wrong in this post-George Floyd murder era to defend the statue of Christopher Columbus.

Columbus was a racist enslaver and genocidal killer of indigenous peoples. Yet he's falsely lionized as someone who "discovered" America, a country that didn't exist whe he traveled.

He certainly never set foot on what's now the Untied States.

As the late Howard Zinn said "Columbus mutilated Indians, and killed them, and kidnapped them."

Here is what Black Star News columnist, retired physician Dr. Nurhussein Mohammed wrote about Cuomo's reactionary position:

In defending the statue, he offers a contorted argument saying that he knows there are "some of his acts which nobody would support" but justifies the statue as "a symbol of Italian American legacy."

Really Governor? Didn't Southerners who yearn for the "good old days" use similar arguments about "legacy" to justify their reactionary positions?

Let's examine the "legacy."

On landing in the Bahamas, Columbus wrote this about the Arawak: “With fifty men we can subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” On his return trip in 1495 in search of gold and people to enslave, he rounded up 1,500 Arawak men, women and children, put them in pens, selecting those he considered most suitable for enslavement and shipped them to Spain. Along the way, 200 died.

A young priest, Bartolome de las Casas, who participated in the conquest of Cuba writes “our work was to exacerbate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy...” Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold." He is perhaps the first trader of enslaved people on a commercial scale.

History also documents that he was in the employ of the Spanish monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand best known for the ethnic cleansing of their day, expelling Jews and Muslims from Spain or forcing them to convert to Catholicism. Isabella also established the Holy Office of the Inquisition at the urging of the Church to punish converts who were suspected of practicing their religion secretly. Punishment included death by burning. This punishment was also extended to Catholics accused of violating Catholic orthodoxy. One might say servant and master, Columbus and Isabella, were kindred spirit.
Is this the man Governor Cuomo insists retain the honor given his actual not imagined legacy?

Far be it for me to say who to celebrate, but there are scores of Italian luminaries from all walks of life who could be held up as icons of Italian heritage. A few names come to mind: Garibaldi, Marconi, Alberto Moravia, Primo Levi, Toscanini, and Pavarotti.

Honesty must drive the ongoing conversations about racism, and the demands and actions for change. We cannot be selective in our repudiation of racism and its legacy.

It is an evil ideology that was used to justify greed, profits and exploitation. It spurred genocide of indigenous peoples in Africa and the New World by so called "discoverers," followed by the institutionalization of enslavement and colonialism.

The removal of the symbols and monuments are important steps in understanding the genesis and perpetuation of racism.

So Governor Cuomo, “Tear Down that Statue!”