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Prota_Gonist t1_j7x52w6 wrote

Well, I'll give Paolino credit, recharacterizing Columbus as a figure of Italian-American pride is cunning.

That framing will allow for the downplaying of complaints from minoritized groups who don't consider Columbus to be aspirational by invoking the historically minoritized status of Italians. The goal, it seems, is to recast Columbus not as a national hero but rather as an ethnically-specific one.

It's all just sleight of hand, though. The statue was taken out of public display for a reason, and it had nothing to do with anti-Italian sentiment.

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MonicaPVD t1_j7zmgf2 wrote

He didn't come up with this idea. The Italian American Anti Defamation League started a national Columbus campaign nearly a hundred years ago. Back then, Italians weren't considered white and were discriminated against across the nation. Someone decided that pitching Columbus as a white explorer who discovered these lands would help bigots embrace Italians. It kind of worked. But that was then and this is now.

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Prota_Gonist t1_j7zogrn wrote

I feel like it's being lost in the conversation that no modern American has an issue with Columbus because he was Italian.

The negative sentiment exists because Columbus was, charitably, a somewhat careless credit-stealer who failed upward and ended up way out of his depth, whose major claim to fame was accomplished by someone else 500 years prior.

Less charitably, he was a ruthless mercenary colonizer blinded by the promise of wealth whose exploration directly led to hundreds of years of oppression and subjugation that some have termed a genocide.

The recasting of Columbus as an Italian Hero doesn't jive with a modern understanding of his role in America's history.

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MonicaPVD t1_j80g3bw wrote

No one is recasting him as a hero today. That was done by Italian Americans a lifetime ago and it was an effective strategy. Modern Americans have a much broader understanding of history and humanity than was commonly available back then. That was then, this is now.

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Noofthab t1_j7y9s59 wrote

There is some interesting scholarship that points to Columbus being Portuguese.

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