Growing Up With Columbus

Columbus Didn't Just Suck Long Ago. He's A White Supremacist Icon Right Now.

I’ve had strong feelings about Christopher Columbus dating back to my earliest conscious thoughts. They started out one way, full of admiration and awe, but I was still young when all that flipped.

It’s only been lately that I’ve acquired the vocabulary to understand why my strong feelings changed into very different strong feelings. And it’s been a much more recent discovery as to why this is relevant to conversations about Columbus that extend far beyond heated holiday dinner discourse with my family.

You see, long before I understood how monstrous Christopher Columbus was long ago, I came to see how rotten he’s been throughout my own lifetime.

Christopher, The Family Bully

Born on October 8, I thought it was cool to have my big day occasionally fall on a bigtime holiday. My mom’s side of the family – which was basically my entire family as my dad was an only child – is Italian. Northern New Jersey Italian.

Columbus Day for us was marked by a big parade in Newark. It was commemorated each year by a special edition of The Italian Tribune (America’s oldest continuously published Italian-American newspaper). Each month a copy of Columbia, the monthly magazine for members of the “Knights of Columbus,” graced the hall table where the important mail was kept.

As a child, I thought these sorts of things were impressive. (For the sake of calibration, you should know that, for a longer time than I care to confess to you, I thought people winning the jackpot on daytime game shows was breaking news.)

I was born on a Columbus Day. Learning that only helped anchor me to him.

“I [was 8 when I] realized Columbus mattered so much to [my Italian relatives] because he gave all Italians the top claim to being truly American. …Through Columbus, Italian immigrants could leap-frog back into time to claim that they, ahead of all European colonizers, were first.”

Surely everyone knew as well as I did just how important the big day was. I’m pretty sure I believed that my many Jewish friends in elementary school also had the Italian Tribune on their kitchen tables; that they went down to the parade in Newark; and that they’d be jealous if they learned that my great grandpa lived just two blocks from the parade route.

That was my mom’s side. The Italian side.

Long before I learned how much Columbus sucked in his own time, I was keenly aware of how much he sucked in my own time.

On my dad’s side, the Irish side, there was, well, my dad. As dads go, I have no notes, but it felt different. I couldn’t have put this into words when I was a child, yet I was keenly aware that he brought no heritage, no culture, and no national identity game to our family dynamic.

Dad had some LPs of bagpipe music which I think were gag gifts (although I recall he did listen to one of them). I only noticed, years later, that the one LP he hung onto was actually recorded by a Scottish regiment. There was Notre Dame, too, which he loved because they were the Fighting Irish. He was proud to be Irish, but there was no space to lift that up in an otherwise Italian family.

That was always his choice, to lay low and be unassuming. In a world where 100% of his extended family members were Italian in-laws, he was wise and strategic. I admired his stoic choices, knowing better than to assert his national identity or heritage amongst fiercely proud Italians. I mean, if national pride mattered to him, he could have always played the John Fitzgerald Kennedy card. He never did.

By age 8, I felt determined to make space for the half of me that was not lifted up.

Here's what I knew: Italians had so much to be proud of. DaVinci. Michelangelo. Marco Polo. Galileo. Dante. Puccini. Cicero. Verdi. The Renaissance. The Roman Empire. The Vatican. Venice. Rome. Archimedes. And, of course, Columbus.

That’s a world class list. So why the fixation with Columbus?

Why was Columbus the one who seemed to be the godfather of all Italian icons?

This mattered to me because, by the time I was 8, I was coming to understand that Columbus was one who made it clear that my Irish ancestry was some sort of deficiency. Being “half” Irish among full Italian relatives, I realized Columbus mattered so much to them because he gave all Italians the top claim to being truly American.

“Over in the living room, my dad was glued to the Dolphins demolishing the St. Louis Cardinals by the score of 55-17. …The alternative was for him to find a high-back dining room chair to watch the bloodbath I was taking.”

As people who were once outcast immigrants when they came over, looked down upon as unwashed people from Southern Europe, derided with foul names and mocked as crude and even savage, the Italians could invoke Columbus as their ace in the hole.

Columbus, alone, gave Italians a credible claim to being “true Americans” that no other great Italian figure or achievement could deliver. Columbus beat the British. He beat the French. Through Columbus, Italian immigrants could leap-frog back into time to claim that they, ahead of all European colonizers, were first - which is to say, Columbus made Italians supreme among white folks in the “New World.”

Sure, none of their pro-Italian hype made the slightest impression among the WASPy Ivy League crowd. The Astors and Cabots and Lodges took no back seat to the Italians. Certainly not on account of Columbus.

But, in the eyes of Italians, the Poles took a back seat. The Spanish did, too. As did the Russian Jews. And the Irish.

I grew up to realize that Columbus was a ticket to dunk on the other lesser and later European immigrant waves. Like the Irish.

In a nation where being the people who are dunking on other people equates to status, it makes sense that Columbus is a big deal to Italians. In America. Otherwise, given the extraordinary depth chart of renowned Italians, he makes no sense. Sure, if he was Irish, I suppose it would make sense for the Irish to latch onto him with their depth chart being what it was for a long time.

Growing up half-Italian, I had a baked-in affinity for Columbus. Growing up half-Irish, he was pretty much my bully – who I was told to share my room with.

That Time Saint Brendan Crashed Thanksgiving Dinner (1977)

I was 15 when the National Geographic Society came to my aid.

In December 1977, National Geographic magazine featured a story on the voyage of “Brendan” - an Irish monk - to the Americas. On the cover they asked “Did Irish monks discover America?”

The magazine that launched an epic family dinner “conversation.”

The issue was released in early November, in time for me to have read it ahead of the large Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt and uncle’s home. On a feast that celebrated white colonization (again, language that was not available to me back then) I was primed for the moment when the conversation came close enough to the topic of Columbus. I am sure I clumsily segued into the new evidence (I said “proof”) that it was an Irish monk who may have been (I said “definitely was”) the first to make the European journey to “discover” the Americas.

(As with Columbus, with Brendan we’re still not talking about any European ever making it to the land that’s now within the boundaries of the United States – but, for reasons unknown to anyone, that happens to be beside the point.)

The ensuing brouhaha was so epic that it remains part of family lore to this day.

The dinner table fireworks had barely begun to erupt when my dad, knowing what was about to pop, quietly slinked away from the table to check up on the NFL game in the living room. It was just me and the whole blood Italians. (My brother and sister were there, too, but this was all my doing.)

I won’t pretend I can recall all that went down. I was, after all, taking fire from about 12 people gathered around the giant table. I do recall that, at some point, one of my many Italian kinfolk asked, “If you’re walking down the street and you see a dime and you keep walking, and then someone else walks down the street and sees it and picks it up, whose dime is it?”

“The person who dropped it?” I wondered back at them. “Why are we proud of stealing dimes?”

That’s probably the moment my mom had enough, flattening her napkin in her lap and straightening her back in an effort to silently call the proceeding to order and hold the floor. When the high-decibel din of discourse subsided to where she could be heard without raising her voice, mom admonished me for my bad behavior, instructing me to apologize to all of my elders at the table who I had disrespected by my claim of an Irish first discovery.

It’s no wonder my dad never talked of President Kennedy.

Over in the living room, my dad was glued to the Dolphins demolishing the St. Louis Cardinals by the score of 55-17. With my uncle riveted to the debate, the big recliner was freed up for dad to flip the side handle into a supine position and watch that bloodbath in comfort, with the color TV screen framed between his parted feet. The alternative was for him to find a high-back dining room chair to watch the bloodbath I was taking.

Dad wasn’t wrong.

He knew the Cardinals were under contract to play the full game, no matter how outgunned they were that day. I could have retreated at any time, yet I kept going back in for more, weaponizing an Irish monk in an vain effort to take down Columbus.

I was fully aware that no ground would be given, but I couldn’t give in. I never admired my dad’s wisdom more than I did that day, yet I wanted none of it. I had a beef with Columbus and I was coming for him.

What I couldn’t quite say then – and if I could have said it, nobody would have understood it – was that Columbus enabled Italian Americans to prove their pedigree was tied to white supremacy and European colonialism, and those particular credentials, they understood, were the ones required to open the doors to success and opportunity in America.

I stood both inside and outside those doors - but I took more notice of the headwinds Columbus created for me as an Irish kid than I took notice of the tailwinds he offered me as an Italian kid.

Antonin, Anthony, Lee and Leon

The Columbian legacy made it possible for the likes of Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. It made it possible for Lee Iacocca to become a captain of industry. And for Leon Panetta and Mike Pompeo to wield power and influence Presidents. Who knows where Anthony Fauci would have ended up if Columbus was not opening doors for Italians throughout the twentieth century.

Columbus, in his day, inflicted grotesque brutalities on those he regarded as inferior; but long before I caught wind of that, I had to reckon with the Columbus who, in my day, licensed Italians to claim their legitimacy as Americans by flexing their derivative clout against the other European interlopers and latecomer migrants. Columbus allowed the recent migrant waves of Italians to self-identify with the established WASP colonizers.

I’m no fan of getting ahead by putting others down. Then again, I’m not one to judge people who are doing what they need to do to survive in a cruel world with the deck stacked against them – which is certainly the situation most Italian-Americans faced. Even I saw the disparagement and ugliness directed at Italians in my community and in the culture.

With the tailwind offered by Columbus, Italians have done well in every facet of American life. It was not a dumb choice to latch onto him. The key point is that it worked, which means Columbus is no longer needed.

Right?

Is Columbus Quintessentially American After All?

To the extent people still believe Columbus was Italian, there’s no getting ahead via Columbus these days. Even when I think of those households that bought into the Washington Irving mythology, Columbus ranks low compared to modern day Italians who have ascended to the heights of American life. With so many recent prominent Italian-American success stories to choose from, what purpose does he serve now?

If anything, Italian-Americans only stand to lose the legitimacy they once craved with their persistent claims to a monstrous and inept explorer who blundered and plundered his way to unleash an otherwise imminent age of global commerce.

Or do they?

Is this not still the America where credibility and legitimacy and status flow to those who steadfastly refuse to reconcile with the past and to those who reject all opportunities to make amends with the people who they’ve cast out?

What’s the bigger flex? To stand by Columbus in spite of – or even on account of – his ruthless approach to conquest because that’s the American way? Or is it a bigger flex to throw him under the bus, confident that the legacy of modern day Italian-Americans are an unassailable claim to legitimacy?

You might guess where I come down on that, but my beliefs don’t matter.

Until the calculus shifts from choosing the former flex to embracing the latter flex, Columbus remains a hero figure.

Columbus retains this status despite him being one of the very worst people who Italians can choose to revere; a violent, mediocre man who fell up the ladder of success, polluting the history of a nation whose soil he never walked upon and of which he knew nothing about.

Of course, in all fairness to those who cling to him as an emblem of pride: what could be more American than admiring that guy?