“You know what it is? I’ll tell you what it is. It’s anti-Italian discrimination. Columbus Day is a day of Italian pride. It’s our holiday and they want to take it away.”
So declares Silvio, one of the characters in The Sopranos, in a gloomy but very funny and politically incorrect scene at their regular meeting spot at Satriale’s market. The gang is upset by news of a local anti-Columbus Day protest. The organizers are planning a “death watch” over a statue of Columbus — that is, Cristoforo Colombo, the famous explorer from Genoa.
The woke liberal will be puzzled by this perspective from Italian Americans. It doesn’t fit with the left’s selective view of bigotry, restricted to “people of color” and other preferred leftist victim groups. The modern wokester is often confused by other ethnicities and nationalities and creeds that have experienced prejudice, particularly Christians whose liberties leftists are eager to limit when they clash with their purposes.
As for Italians and Columbus Day, that’s an area where progressives in public schools and universities have conveniently failed to educate. They either don’t know or simply don’t teach the reality that Columbus Day has origins in a noble action taken by President Benjamin Harrison in 1892 to combat anti-Italian discrimination.
The day of remembrance was prompted by an infamous lynching of Italian immigrants in New Orleans on March 14, 1891. The city’s chief of police had been shot dead, and the mayor was quick to blame “Sicilian gangsters.” Over 100 Italians were rounded up and 19 put on trial — and found not guilty. Nonetheless, the locals wanted blood. They didn’t like these “white n-ggers.” A massive mob of 10,000 formed outside the prison. The mob stormed inside and dragged 11 Italian immigrants from their cells. It was the largest single mass lynching in America’s history.
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