In many ways, the legacy of Christopher Columbus is a lie and a hurtful one. New London Mayor Michael Passero made the right decision in having the statue honoring him removed from its pedestal at the corner of Bank and Blinman streets.

In moving the monument to an undisclosed location, the mayor acted most immediately out of concern for public safety. In the awakening of righteous passions following the killing of George Floyd at the knee of a police officer, demonstrators have cried out that symbols of racist behavior can no longer be tolerated. In that spirit, New London’s statue of “Colombo” had been the target of repeated acts of vandalism, sprayed with red paint. Passero feared the acts of protest could escalate with efforts to damage or topple the statue.

But the mayor, who is of Italian-American descent, also recognized, “The statue is just too offensive to too many people.”

The long-term decision moves to the City Council. It would be a mistake to entertain returning the statue to a place of public prominence. A diverse city striving for equality cannot entertain a symbol of complete dominance of one group over another. Because this is what Columbus, stripped of the lies, has come to represent.

The myths surrounding Columbus include his disproving the world was flat. In reality, a round Earth was already accepted science at the time.

His four journeys, beginning in 1492, were credited with “discovering America.” In trying to find a westward trade route to Asia, Columbus encountered a land unknown to Europe as his ships stumbled upon portions of what is now the Caribbean, Central and South America, to the genocidal-scale detriment of the natives.

While Columbus was not the first — Norseman had explored the area several centuries earlier — his expeditions were a major historic event, bringing two worlds and cultures that had lived in complete isolation into contact. The resulting exploitation, enslavement, torture and murder of the inhabitants by these European explorers is a deep, dark stain.

Yet the mythology that arose around Columbus was sanitized to become the Italian-born gallant explorer discovering the New World, in the process acting as the forerunner to the experimentation in self-rule that would be the United States of America.

It was in this spirit and with a sense of pride that Italian immigrants in New London and in many other cities raised the money from their often-meager means to sculpt and erect statues to Columbus and donate them to those communities. New London’s “Colombo” statue was dedicated in 1928.

These Italian Americans faced their own discrimination. If protestant English dating back to the nation’s earliest colonies had the Mayflower to celebrate, the Catholic Italians had in their heritage the man who started it all.

Perhaps the monument can in some fashion be one day used as part of an exhibit to tell the whole story in a museum setting. But the immediate need is healing.

What of the vandals whose actions pushed Passero to act? Those actions were borne out of frustration that years of talk, of pointing out the hurt the statue symbolized, had failed to produce change. In that sense there are similarities with the tragedy that has generated the unprecedented demands for action in hundreds of protests, not only in the United States, but across Europe and in other parts of the world.

For decades, the unfair and unequal treatment of black Americans and other people of color by police and the criminal-justice system has been documented. The higher chance that a black man, in an encounter with police, could end up dead after the most routine of stops has been demonstrated time and again, and now recorded with modern technology.

Yet it keeps happening, leading to this massive and sometimes violent response.

The Columbus statue vandals committed crimes, in their minds acts of justified civil disobedience. If arrests are made, that is the case they will present to prosecutors and judicial authorities. We don’t condone damaging property. But we understand it. And trying to understand is central to what the nation is going through right now.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.