giving her the benefit of the doubt I had responded to "since you're jewish what do you know about the jewish mafia?" with an explanation of the Purple Gang and Meyer Lansky and the absorption of the mafia into the national security state, and she comes back at me with that.
This came after two days of me explaining historical materialism to her. I think there's a lesson to be learned here about white people
Rhode Island 'named by Dutch explorer Adrian Block. He named it "Roodt Eylandt" meaning "red island" in reference to the red clay that lined the shore. The name was later anglicized when the region came under British rule.'
There's a second explanation that explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano compared the area to the island of Rhodes. It's uncertain why the colonists there chose the name, but the Dutch name is the most probable. But there's no certain explanation.