North America would have remained a veritable Garden of Eden populated by virtuous, non-violent indigenous peoples if Columbus hadn't gone and ruined it all by "discovering" America.
Okay, maybe Obama didn't phrase it exactly like that, but the meaning of his Columbus Day statement was more or less the same.
Obama would have had nothing at all positive to say about old Chris had the explorer been a mangia-cake. But since he was Italian, and Italians are one of the U.S.'s recognized minority ethnic groups, Obama felt the need to issue some faint praise of Columbus (although faint praise, as we know, is a kind of damnation).
Minor detail to ruin the narrative: those "virtuous, non-violent indigenous peoples" were all - when given the opportunity - slave-owners. And some of the slaves they owned were black.
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