Senate Christopher Columbus - legacy and separating facts from fiction

While correct. Even if 1400s Europeans had the best of intentions there would still be some *******s who would spread disease to the natives.

 

In the end, a different Italian should have been chosen as a champion for Italian-Americans who were being oppressed and lynched (in Louisiana, for example) and regularly derided (including in mainstream media) with racial slurs (and ridiculed for “fraternizing” with African-Americans). Columbus had zero to do with the harrowing early Italian-American immigrant experience. He was a rich Genoese explorer/ slaver who predated the existence of the Italian state. What the heck does that have to do with the grinding poverty that led dark-skinned southern Italians to face fear and persecution in an Anglo-Saxon dominated America? Nothing. In addition to Indigenous Peoples Day, Columbus Day should be moved and renamed in honor of heroic Italian-American immigrants who faced unjust persecution. How about Sacco and Vanzetti Day? Or Petrosino Day? There are a lot of infinitely better options.

ETA: For context, here’s a bit on the mass lynching of southern Italian-Americans (who were not considered white) in Louisiana in the late 1800s: https://www.history.com/.amp/news/the-grisly-story-of-americas-largest-lynching

The truth is that President Harrison just picked an Italian name out of a hat to calm Italy down after the lynchings led to a diplomatic spat. There’s no reason to cling to a name picked out of a hat. Particularly when it’s the name of a perpetrator of genocide who wasn’t Southern Italian and never even stepped foot in North America.

 

As I've said in the thread, I have no problem with a day to celebrate Italian Americans. It would be interesting. But I do think it should probably be a different day. Probably one that's more organically connected to whatever person or experience that is trying to be commemorated. I don't think it need necessarily be about heroizing a certain individual, either.

 

Exactly. It’s really that simple. No reason to cling to a figure that was cynically used as a way to make legally non-white Italians (at the time southern Italians were not considered white) feel more white - by connecting them to white colonizers. There are many names to choose from, including
immigrant rights activists that actually represented the Italian-American immigrant experience.

 

While I think the idea for a state/federal holiday is dumb, I think it does say something as to why they cling to Columbus since prominent alternative names for that without baggage don't seem to often come up, especially for the era involved.

 

There’s no reason to stick to the “era” as that era has nothing to do with the reason Columbus Day was created in the first place - which was to calm the persecuted Italian immigrant community after a massive lynching by white people in Louisiana in the 1890s. Choose someone from the era of struggle for what was then a minority, non-white immigrant community in America. It shouldn’t have been a day for celebrating colonizers that committed genocide. It should’ve been a day in honor of poor, persecuted and brave immigrants.