In 1992, I wrote an essay for this newspaper.  It was called "Rethinking Columbus: Thoughts by an Italian American."   In that essay, I shared my deep concerns about the coming 500-year celebrations of Columbus that were to take place in our country.  A lot has changed since then and some things have stayed the same.  

I have grown to love my Italian culture even more.  After eight visits to Sicily and a six-months stay in my grandparents’ village in the region of Caltanisetta, I realized so much about the resilience, power, compassion, the oppression and hospitality of Southern Italian people.  In the U.S.,   there are now more than 20 cities that were able to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day.  And in Rochester, even though it remains a holiday, we no longer have a parade and have been recognizing other ways to celebrate our heritage.  What does this mean for us as Italian Americans and what does it mean for Indigenous people? 

Last week I was talking with Ron Garrow of Rochester’s Native American Cultural Center.  I asked him what he thought about Columbus Day.  He shared a story from his childhood when he was taught that Columbus discovered America.  He bravely questioned his teacher by asking, “How could he discover it if we were already here?”  He said it was hard for him to have his culture and people made invisible.  I, like other white children accepted the story as told to us.  This misinformation has had a long and devastating effect on both of our groups. For me, it left unseen wounds of learned racism and white superiority. 

What wasn’t taught also had lasting damage.  I grew up never knowing that there was an active well-organized movement that targeted Italian Americans. In the 1890’s it was what fueled one of our nation’s largest mass lynching when 11 Italian Americans were killed in New Orleans and in the 1920’s it was a part of the growing Eugenics movement, which had profound effect on US social and public policies.  As a result of this hatred, and bad science,  multiple states passed sterilization laws and Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924 restricting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. As Italians, we were trying to find our way in this nation, navigating racism, claiming whiteness and white privilege, as we were simultaneously getting the message about how many people in our country felt about us.  In the midst of all of this hatred and discrimination, in 1937 Franklin Roosevelt declared Columbus Day a national holiday. Was he trying to find some way to raise up Italian Americans or to appease us?  Having a hero of such magnitude  made us feel, despite the anti-Italian thinking, that we had a right to be here and could officially be a part of the white group.   

This history is important to me and my fellow Italians – so that we can now bring to light the heaviness of rejection that our ancestors felt and why they may have been willing to accept this false hero.  Maybe with this reckoning we can be allies to Native Americans and recognize the true history of their victimization and vow not to let it continue by making a hero out of a man who set in motion enslavement and genocide.  The dialogue among our groups needs to happen in order to create a more genuine and empowering future for all of us.  

Kathy Castania works as a Lead Facilitator with the Opening Doors Diversity Project.  She is also an active member of the Steering Committee for SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) ROC

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