# Columbus Day v Indigenous People's Day v Leif Erikson Day

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/columbus-day-v-indigenous-peoples-day-v-leif-erikson-day/952323>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [October 11, 2021, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/columbus-day-v-indigenous-peoples-day-v-leif-erikson-day/952323 "2021-10-11T21:56:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 390

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**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2021, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/columbus-day-v-indigenous-peoples-day-v-leif-erikson-day/952323/390 "2021-11-22T17:50:56Z")

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> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> It seems to me that they follow from your saying that Columbus is excluded from “the bright-line definition of national **identity** ” that you were using.

History, not identity.

> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> > [@Max\_S](#):
> >
> > > [@thorny\_locust](#):
> > >
> > > Consider the possibility that the person who’s wrong is the one who’s insisting that national identity rests on identifying with only one specific segment of the nation.
> > 
> > I don’t insist that it rests on identifying with one specific segment of the nation, I’ve been saying that for most of history the nation didn’t include swaths of Native Americans or Blacks or Chinese or what have you;
> 
> Yes it did.

We disagree on what is or is not part of a nation’s history proper; however I still do not insist that national identity rests on identifying with only one specific segment of the nation today.

> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> The problem is that you’re looking at a museum full of paintings that were selected to focus on members of only one group; not at a museum full of photographs which show who was actually there.

Exactly my point, I see a nation as a specific group of people - not necessarily the people who were “there”. You are not pointing out a lost work that belongs in my exhibit, nor proposing a restoration, nor are you exposing any works in my collections as fraudulent. You would have me change the subject of the exhibit itself.

> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> Nope. For one thing, it isn’t really something that has a purpose, as if it were designed by somebody and imposed on the others – it’s something that happens as the result of a concatenation of a whole lot of interactions. For another, cohesiveness and indentification within a group has to do with that group’s internal interrelationships. If the only relationship they’ve got with each other is that they all want to other somebody else, you haven’t got a group identity there at all.

I disagree. I think there _is_ a purpose to identity: to distinguish same from different, self from non-self, us from them, in-groups from out-groups etc. A desire to ‘other somebody else’ is all it takes. Identity can be designed and imposed unilaterally, or by mutual consent. I am at liberty to assign any group a common identity without their knowing, much less their consent; I may do so without the members sharing any other trait whatsoever.

~Max

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