New Jersey School Board Votes to Remove Holidays from Calendar to Be More Inclusive
The majority of states celebrate Columbus Day, a holiday meant to honor the memory of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas on October 12, 1492.
Over the past decade, public opinion has begun to turn against the Italian explorer amidst claims of his cruel “treatment of the indigenous communities he encountered and for his role in the violent colonization at their expense,” according to CNN.
An article in History.com informs readers that “[U]pon arriving in the Bahamas, the explorer and his men forced the native peoples they found there into slavery. Later, while serving as the governor of Hispaniola, he allegedly imposed barbaric forms of punishment, including torture.”
Based on these and other reports of Columbus’ alleged ruthlessness, some states have opted to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day.
The Randolph, New Jersey, Board of Education made the decision to rename the holiday at a May 13 meeting, which set off a “firestorm” among members of the community.
According to Tap into Randolph, 125 people attended a meeting held last Thursday to convince the board to reconsider their decision to eliminate Columbus Day. The report said the meeting was “emotionally charged and chaotic.” There were “numerous shouting interruptions, thunderous standing ovations … and multiple calls for security to escort people out of the meeting.”
Representatives from several Italian American organizations, and New Jersey state Sen. Anthony Bucco, all tried to persuade the board to reverse the decision.
Tap reported that “the crowd grew disgruntled with what they were hearing, and an uproar ensued. A small group stood and staged a ‘walk-out’ while others shouted at the board and security stepped up to encourage some to head to the door.”
Shortly afterward, according to Tap, one of the board members made “a motion … to remove the names of all holidays that mention ethnic or religious groups, to not exclude or offend any other group. Realizing that some groups are still ‘left out’ and they cannot and do not recognize everyone, the board suddenly decided to vote on removing all holiday names and simply calling them ‘Day Off’. Further clarity to the motion was made before the vote – that it would include all days off, including days such as Teachers Convention and Memorial Day.”
And one by one, each member of the board voted for the motion to eliminate the names of all holidays from the calendar. Going forward, all holidays on the Randolph Board of Education calendar will be labeled “Day Off.”
December 25 will be a “Day Off,” as will Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The fourth Thursday in November and the first Sunday “after the first full moon following the vernal equinox in March“? Days off.
Board member Dorene Roche told the group, “If we don’t have anything on the calendar, we don’t have to have anyone be hurt feelings or anything like that,” reported WNYW-TV.
What to call Columbus Day? One N.J. school board, facing backlash, leaves it blank https://t.co/qRE7eaFWts pic.twitter.com/uR6AEULzz5
— njdotcom (@njdotcom) June 13, 2021
Does the left plan to take the joy and the purpose out of every holiday that is meaningful to one group because it’s not significant to everyone? Is that how this works?
There are too many races, ethnic groups and religions in the world for everyone to be included in each one. There will be times when one group or another is marginalized. That’s life.
LGBT Pride Month holds about as much interest for me as my grandmother’s celebration of the Albanian Orthodox Easter would for them.
But that doesn’t mean every holiday should be taken off the calendar.
The logic of the Randolph School Board’s decision escapes me.
The left is turning our society into a colorless shadow of itself in an exhaustive effort to become more inclusive.
In their world, everything would be gender-neutral, race-neutral and religion-neutral. Instead of celebrating and learning from our differences, the left would prefer to end them.
It kind of feels like the old Soviet Union.
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