Democratic Borough President of the Bronx Ruben Diaz, Jr. recently explained in the New York Post, why he is proudly marching in the Columbus Day Parade. He is doing so after devoting considerable energy to cleansing his borough of Confederate statuary. Diaz, it seems, just ordered the removal of the busts of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from the “historic Hall of Fame for Great Americans on the campus of Bronx Community College.” These statues, he contends, were intended as a “thinly veiled threat to the African-American populations in the communities where they were installed.” Diaz contrasts celebrations of Columbus and statues erected to honor this brave explorer to inappropriate tributes to slave-owners and the “leaders of seditious insurrection.” Although Columbus might have had a hand in the “shameful, vicious treatment of the people he came into contact with,” this must be “balanced” by all the good that Columbus epitomizes. He foreshadowed by his presence in the New World “the spirit of the Italian-Americans that have done much to shape this city and this nation—from giants like Fiorello LaGuardia and Joe Di Maggio and Mother Cabrini, to the laborer who built so much of this great city.”
As I read this tortured expression of political opportunism, two sentiments welled up inside of me: affection for Italian-Americans and irritation with American Southerners, who have shown surprisingly little interest in defending the heroes of their regional and ancestral history. Italian American political and civic leaders pulled out all stops defending the reputation of someone whom they consider to be the first Italian American. Catholic civic groups like the Knights of Columbus contributed to the…