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by grardb
607 days ago
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> He is primarily of interest because Italian-Americans want a feeling of pride and so celebrate "one of their own", the Genovese Columbus. May I ask why you hold this opinion? I grew up with tons of Italian-Americans (NYC) and I can confidently say that I've never heard a single person express pride in the fact that Columbus was Italian. In fact, based on my experience, a lot of Americans—regardless of descent—think/were explicitly taught that Columbus was Spanish. |
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You might ask "if he's so evil and wicked and wrong and everything bad about the world (and not just a convenient famous person to scapegoat for more general ills), why did anyone ask the US to have a Columbus Day anyway?"
And the answer to that is Italian-Americans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day
> Many Italian Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage and not of Columbus himself
> For the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1892, following lynchings in New Orleans, where a mob had murdered 11 Italian immigrants, President Benjamin Harrison declared Columbus Day as a one-time national celebration.
> In 1934, as a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus and New York City Italian leader Generoso Pope, Congress passed a statute stating: "The President is requested to issue each year a proclamation designating October 12 as Columbus Day
> in 1942, Franklin Roosevelt had the removal of the designation of Italian Americans as "enemy aliens" announced on Columbus Day along with a plan to offer citizenship to 200,000 elderly Italians living in the United States
> In 1966, Mariano A. Lucca, from Buffalo, New York, founded the National Columbus Day Committee, which lobbied to make Columbus Day a federal holiday
> San Francisco claims the nation's oldest continuously existing celebration with the Italian-American community's annual Columbus Day Parade, which was established by Nicola Larco in 1868, while New York City boasts the largest, with over 35,000 marchers and one million viewers around 2010
So, while the Italian-Americans you grew up with may not have been one of the 35,000 marchers in NYC, I bet most of those 35,000 marchers considers themselves Italian-American. They, and all other Italian-Americans, get a federal holiday which they can use to celebrate the connection between Italy and America (if they so wish), thanks to Italian-Americans lobbying for Columbus Day since the 1800s.