Circling Columbus
Today is Columbus Day, when we honor Italian-Americans’ countless gifts to America. Some don’t like the name because they revile Christopher Columbus, the Italian sailing for Spain who landed in what Europeans considered the New World in 1492, initiating centuries of wrenching and brutal treatment of Native Americans. But the moniker remains, honoring an epoch-defining explorer who Italians proudly chose as their hero many years ago. Fine with us.
It’s not that Native Americans or Indigenous peoples aren’t owed recognition of their own. Surely they are, not only for the culture and civilizations they built before the arrival of Europeans, but for their continuing contributions since. So, too, we must teach how millions of Americans who trace their roots back to before the Pilgrims have endured indignities and discrimination, individual and systematic.
But it need not be done in some silly zero-sum competition with Italians who want a single box on the calendar to exalt in their heritage, similar to the one the Irish have on St. Patrick’s, or the Germans on Von Steuben Day, or the Chinese have on the Lunar New Year, or the Puerto Ricans have on the day of their parade.
The basic recognition that a mature society can honor both Native- and Italian-Americans — including through the character of Columbus, an icon embraced over generations — could be nicely exemplified in New York City’s public monuments. Years ago, protesters wanted the statute of the explorer in Columbus Circle torn down, and the circle (and presumably the university uptown, and our capital city in Washington, and much more) renamed; Mayor de Blasio at first fed their indignation by launching a city commission to subject it and other monuments to some kind of modern purity test.
The commission came to a reasonable conclusion: that the Columbus monument should stay, albeit with “the addition of new temporary artworks, permanent monuments, and robust public dialogue that more fully tells our history.” That was three years ago. A scan of monuments tagged “Native American” in the Parks Departments’ catalog reveals only two monuments to specific tribal figures. They were dedicated in 1906 and 1869.
De Blasio calls today Italian Heritage Day/Indigenous People’s Day, but he hasn’t even had the fortitude to follow through on this crucial corrective.