It no longer seems necessary since my view is suddenly becoming generally accepted. But here's an interesting piece on the origins of the observance. I don't think many people appreciate the stigma and discrimination once faced by Italian immigrants to the U.S. Like many the Irish and people from elsewhere in Southern and Eastern Europe, they didn't become "white" for at least a couple of generations. So the observance of Columbus day was important to the Italian-American community as a recognition that they are real Americans.
However, as a federal holiday which carries symbolism for all Americans, it's a very bad choice. It's a bad choice for Italian Americans, actually, since Columbus was a murderous moron. I give you Adam Conover ruining Columbus day. Also, he was not Italian -- Italy did not exist in his lifetime and he did not speak Italian. If you had asked him "Are you Italian?" (presumably in Ligurian, which is the language he understood) he would have said no. (Yes, Genoa is in what is today Italy but would you say that Cetshwayo was South African?) And he never set foot in North America or was even aware of the existence of the North American continent, since he thought he was in Asia.
But the deeper problem, obviously, is that making Columbus day a federal holiday proclaims that the United States as an entity is defined by the European conquest. That is indeed an essential part of the story but it isn't the whole story, and it isn't something anyone should feel proud about. The holiday is an insult to the people who were here before Columbus, to the African people who were kidnapped and brought here in chains as slaves, and to Asian people, who he thought he was murdering and enslaving because that was the thing to do. It's also an insult to everybody who doesn't admire murderous morons. So let's not do it any more.
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