“Land back”
These are the words that have written by racist bigots time and time again when they attack symbols of European culture, history, and religion (including, just this week, the statue of Christopher Columbus in New York City).
The people (and I use that word loosely) who write such things do not deserve their land back.
In fact, the land in question is not theirs, nor has it ever been.
Any person who attacks symbols of Christopher Columbus does so because Columbus symbolizes being different and thinking for oneself. People who attack symbols of Columbus do so because they have no tolerance for anyone who is different than them. They care only about themselves and those who look and think as they do. In their eyes, other people’s feelings, thoughts, opinions, and perspectives don’t matter. People who attack symbols of Columbus value nothing but mindless conformity and strive to obliterate all diversity from the world.
Anyone with such values and aims is a bully, a bigot, and a morally bad person.
Bullies and bigots do not deserve their land back.
People who have no tolerance for other ethnicities, cultures, and ways of thinking do not deserve their land back.
People who claim to have experienced trauma and oppression, while actively inflicting further pain and suffering on those who have actually experienced trauma and oppression, do not deserve their land back.
People who destroy an autistic person’s special interest, and then ridicule that person for having the audacity to be upset about the fact that everything that made their life worth living was just destroyed, do not deserve their land back.
Those who vandalize statues with the words “Land Back,” or who attack historical figures in even more despicable ways, are not oppressed. They are not victims. They have not experienced trauma. They do not hold the moral high ground. They are just bullies. Vicious, cruel, mean-spirited, and nasty bullies. Full of self-righteousness, they take delight in inflicting pain on people whom they have judged to be inferior, merely because they are different. There is nothing righteous about that.
As an autistic person, I have been treated all my life as if I do not belong. And now I am being told that because I have light skin, and because my ancestors came from Italy and Scandinavia, I do not belong on this continent.
Pardon my French, but… fuck that.
Starting at age 12, I saved up allowance money, birthday and Christmas money, and earnings from part-time and later full-time jobs to buy a small house on a small plot of land. My house, along with the land on which it stands, is mine. I worked backbreakingly hard, overcoming obstacle after obstacle in a world not designed for my needs, to earn the money to buy it.
A racist and intolerant bully, who hates me because I was born with a different skin color and a different type of brain than they have, has no right to my land.