Commentary: As the country continues to argue over memorials to confederate generals and conquistadors, statues of Christopher Columbus have been knocked down and vandalized as well, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was asked monuments to Columbus in light of, well, the slave trading and genocide.
Cuomo held firm, saying Columbus “has come to represent and signify appreciation for the Italian American contribution to New York.”
To respond to this, I dug up my own Italian-American membership card in order to call baloney on this argument.
Is this guy trying to suggest we Italian-Americans don’t have anybody else we can claim as a representative of our ethnic group’s contribution to New York or America?
First of all, the point of these Columbus conversations is to investigate the American project itself, the violent colonialism and imperialism, and how that continues to function and continues to cause harm, which might be more urgent than Italian-American pride; but the good news is, there is no lack of Italian figures who made tremendous contributions worth celebrating.
For explorers, we have Amerigo Vespucci, we have Caboto, we have Verrazzano. We have Marco Polo. We have artists, scientists, literary figures. Galileo, Volta, Caruso, Dante.
As for New York, come on. Christopher Columbus never set foot in North America much less New York.
There are generations of builders, doctors, cleaners, soldiers, wine merchants, tailors, cobblers, artists, educators, with Italian last names who made long lasting contributions to New York, even during times when Italian immigrants, like my grandfather, were discriminated against and brutalized. And for high culture, well, did you know the first opera house in the country was in New York, was founded by Lorenzo da Ponte?
This is just scratching the surface. The bottom line is: Times change, so do monuments. As an ethnic cultural identity, enriching our lives with family and community, history and language, and a way to upend stereotypes, Italian Americans have options. We can sail away from Columbus and that bloody legacy, and forge new monuments pointing to much better stories.