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It bothers me that the answer to "When did people come to America", when clarified as something like "When did European colonists come to what is now the United
by eesmith 4y ago
It bothers me that the answer to "When did people come to America", when clarified as something like "When did European colonists come to what is now the United States" is still wrong.
Google's answer is "The first colony was founded in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607."
It links to https://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/colonial/jb_colonial_subj.html https://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/colonial/jb_colonial_subj... .
But that page says: "The Spanish were among the first Europeans to explore the New World and the first to settle in what is now the United States" then gives the Jamestown example after switching focus to England and the Atlantic coast.
San Juan, PR was founded in 1521 by Spanish colonists.
St. Augustine, FL was established in 1561 by Spanish colonists and is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the contiguous United States.
I grew up in Florida. I visited St. Augustine as a kid. We all learned that it was colonized before Jamestown. My American identity does not require English colonization be placed on an artificial pedestal.
The essay ends "after all it learned from us."
But isn't that why people were "calling Google’s search algorithm biased and racist"? Because it learned it from us?
- Dylan16807 4y agoThe question that is correctly being answered is more like "when did the colonists that formed the united states first arrive". Florida as a colony was founded by Spain, was briefly under British control and against secession, and then went back to Spain for another fifty years. Then it was finally sold to the fifty-year-old United States, much too late to be part of the founding.