Happy Indigenous People's Day: Nobody Cares About Columbus Day Anymore (Still)

We did it, we killed Columbus.

This column by Robyn first appeared in 2022. Let’s make it a tradition!

Ever since I first started writing on the internet, 12 million years ago, I have put out a yearly plea to my fellow Italian-Americans to stop with the Columbus Day shit, on account of the fact that it is super-embarrassing. Sometimes I just reuse the same one over and over again because I want to say the same thing every year: Columbus was a rapist and a genocidal maniac, and having our big ethnic celebration on a day dedicated to him is an insult to all of us who are not rapists or genocidal maniacs. I'd say also those of us who are particularly good at navigating but I got lost driving to a mall I used to work at a couple weeks ago, so I'm not one to talk.

Anyway! Fingers crossed, but I have yet to see one op-ed from some Knights of Columbus cafone whining about how it's actually a beautiful celebration of our heritage, and usually those suckers start a week out. In fact, pretty much all I've seen are articles about how various towns and cities are celebrating Indigenous People's Day instead, which is just wonderful.

In fact, I'm reusing an article right now. So meta, right? I actually wrote the two paragraphs above on Columbus Day in 2020. And this year it's pretty much the same. There are no-op-eds, least of all in the New York Times, which at one time diligently published one every year. A Google News search reveals that the only real mentions of it are in headlines about what is and is not open, or about the small parades held and attended by the few Italian-Americans who insist on continuing to be embarrassing about this.

Last year, I will admit [2021 presumably!], there was a weird last gasp coming from the Conference Of Presidents Of Major Italian-American Organizations (COPOMIAO), which took out full-page ads in various newspapers explaining how actually, Columbus Day is totally “anti-racist.” Because it came about in response to to the lynchings of 11 Italian-American men in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1891. That is factually true, but as I explained at the time:

First of all, it was xenophobia, not racism, because Italian people are white. We are white now and we were white in 1891. One big clue that we were not truly considered non-white back then, despite xenophobia and slurs and what have you, is that the families of those lynching victims actually got reparations. They got $25,000 in 1892, the year after it happened — the inflation calculator doesn't go back to 1891, so we can't say exactly what that would be today, but $25,000 in 1913 would be valued at about $690,000 today. You know who hasn't gotten reparations? 

But this year? So far I don't see anything, even on The Federalist and Breitbart. I didn't get an alert on my calendar for Columbus Day, I got an alert for Indigenous People's Day. And if you want the truth, I totally forgot it was even coming up.

As I said in 2020:

Each year, there's less and less pushback, each year more statues come tumbling down. Each year, there are fewer people out there that I have to convince we have way more to be proud of than freaking Columbus, and that we don't need his non-discovery of America to validate our being here. I mean, come on — we invented pizza. We should be able to dine out on that alone, no pun intended, for the next several hundred years. Everyone, I believe, is very glad we did the whole world the favor of inventing all of the best food in it.

It's been an actual success! It's come a long way since I got sent to the principal's office in second grade for trying to explain to my teacher that Columbus was a genocidal maniac who also did not “discover” America.

Hopefully someday we can come up with a nice day upon which to exploit our ethnic heritage for fun and profit (and parades, because old Italian people love parades). If we want to keep with the theme of finding shit, St. Anthony's Day is on June 13 (St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things) and that's already celebrated in a lot of major cities. (True story, I actually lost my purse at the Feast of St. Anthony in Boston and it was mailed back to me from Florida.) There's also St. Joseph's Day, the day when you get to eat lots of zeppole. That's a pretty good time. I'm an atheist, but you don't have to be Catholic to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

Also, I have always maintained that July 13 would be a good day to celebrate, as it was the wedding anniversary of Louis Prima and Keely Smith (who was Cherokee), which — in my opinion — would be celebrating a far more joyous and productive collaboration between Italian Americans and Indigenous Peoples than Columbus Day.

OPEN THREAD!

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