Christopher Columbus Day.  Indigenous Peoples Day.  A Monday where, despite being a holiday, almost everyone still has to go to work although the Post Office is closed.  For some people, Columbus Day is a minor holiday leading up to Halloween, the first holiday of note since Labor Day.  For others, Columbus Day is ground zero of the eternal culture war that is American politics.  New Jersey, which is home to a huge Italian-American population, is no exception and has been witness to its own share of controversy swirling around the explorer who unknowingly bumped into the New World 530 years ago.

Most Americans are familiar with the story of Christopher Columbus.  The allegedly Genoese sailor who wanted to find a shorter route to the lucrative Asian markets by sailing west, across the Atlantic, and reaching his destination that way rather than going through the overland routes through the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and India into China and points beyond.

Four years before Columbus’ voyage, in 1488, the Portuguese sailor Bartolomeu Dias had sailed south along the coast of Africa and became the first European to round the Cape of Good Hope and enter the Indian Ocean.  Portugal could now bypass the often-hostile western Asian empires and reach the wealth of the East Indies by sea.  Columbus was able to get his opportunity on behalf of Spain, whose rulers, Isabella of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon, had finally finished the 700-year Reconquista and drove out the last of the Islamic rulers in Iberia.  Eager to enhance Spain’s wealth and prestige, and motivated by seeing the Portuguese as competitors, Isabella agreed to finance Columbus’ mission to find the Indies by a westward route, employing three small ships, the caravels Niña and Pinta, chiefly employed for cruising the Mediterranean and the larger carrack, the Santa Maria.

The rest is history.

Except it isn’t history.  In 2022, the legacy of Christopher Columbus continues to sail into our political lives, causing waves.  In the United States, Christopher Columbus was not a particularly “big deal” until large numbers of Italian immigrants began arriving on these shores, looking to embed themselves into an accepted part of American society.  Columbus, being a Roman Catholic figure, and one who sailed for Spain, was not held in the American mindset with the same level of prestige and respect as the likes of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who sailed for the Dutch, and the colonial explorers who came after.  Columbus, after all, died still convinced he had reached Asia, even though many of his contemporaries soon found out that the Western Hemisphere had a unique landmass, full of unique native peoples.  “America” itself is named for the Italian cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.  “Columbia” had been used as a name referring to America, and, indeed, is found in the capital’s name as Washington, District of Columbia.  The south American country of Colombia is named for the Italian navigator, but all in all, the largely Anglo-Saxon cultural dominion of the United States in the first two centuries of its existence did not put particular emphasis on the Genoese sailor.

Republican candidate for congress Bob Healey released a statement Monday morning.  A sailor himself and yacht shipwright, Healey raised his colors and fired a metaphorical salvo in the Culture War against the first Korean-American elected to Congress.

“On this Columbus Day 2022 I wish to recognize and pay tribute to Italian immigrants and Italian Americans who have contributed so much to the commerce and culture of America,” the Healey campaign said.  “Columbus Day is a U.S. holiday that commemorates the landing of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492.  It is extremely regrettable that last year when Congressman Kim was not up for reelection, he jumped on the woke bandwagon in seeking to replace this commemorative holiday with ‘Indigenous People’s Day.’  Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with celebrating Native Americans with their own national holiday — the problem is with those like Andy Kim who wish to re-write or worse erase history and effectively pit one group against another.”

The Healey campaign brought Kim and his take on Columbus Day into other, present-day issues.

“For a great many of Andy’s constituents that he claims ‘he’s fighting for,’ Columbus Day is an important way of both honoring Columbus’ achievements and celebrating Italian-American heritage. The vast majority of this district’s voters are hardworking people who want a common sense moderate representing them — that’s not Andy Kim. Canceling Columbus Day is just another example of the Congressman’s extreme, radical ideology. Whether it is his support for cutting the defense budget by 10% impacting the Joint Base, or his silence in defending law enforcement, or his support for teaching sex ed to second graders, Andy Kim is out of step with the values and beliefs of the people he represents.”

Characterizing Kim as a “poster boy for this current woke fad”, the Healey campaign said that Kim’s thinking was an ideology that was representative of a threat to democracy itself.  The campaign referenced French economist and monetary historian Thierry Vissol, using his description of people they said think like Kim.  The Vissol quote used asserted that such an ideology means, “Language, history, art, music, literature and education should be cleansed of all offenses, real or not, present or past, against members of these racial or gender ‘minority communities’. New words, euphemisms, periphrases, appear to replace those now deemed offensive. As in George Orwell’s ‘1984’, the idea is to prevent the expression of critical ideas by changing the vocabulary. The word…’mother’ by ‘parent who gives birth’, etc.”

Insider NJ reached out to the Kim campaign for a comment but, as of this writing, did not receive a response.

Renaming Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day may not exactly be Orwellian in the sense of Ingsoc, newspeak, doublethink, and thoughtcrime, or contributing to an inescapable and pervasive surveillance state such as Communist China has built.  But the culture war serves to strike a nerve with the Italian-American community while simultaneously antagonizing the Native American residents of New Jersey as well.

Governor Phil Murphy took to social media Monday morning and covered both bases: a seemingly sensible and logical thing to do.  But you can’t make everyone happy.

The governor’s first post read, “Today we honor the invaluable contributions and extraordinary culture of our indigenous communities as we keep building toward an equitable and sustainable future that leaves no one behind.”

The governor’s next post read, “Italian Americans have a rich history in New Jersey.  Today we honor the achievements, successes, and heritage of Italian immigrants and Italian Americans.”

It is necessary to take a look at the origins of Columbus Day in the United States to see why this is a hot-button issue.

Italian-Americans were, like other minority groups in the US, discriminated against, especially in the earlier years of their arrival.  As such, Italian-Americans wanted to have a figure who could “prove” their American-ness, and they found it in Columbus.  Christopher Columbus, after all, “discovered” “America” and without him, the United States of America as we know it would not exist.  Columbus himself never came to the North American mainland, but because he opened the door to European exploration and colonization (at a huge cost of human suffering for the native populations), the historical and political connection was there, and the logic was sound.

Columbus proved that Italians had been part of the American experience from the moment he and his Spanish sailors first set foot in the Caribbean.  The significance to Italian-Americans is Columbus’ willingness to take a risk and venture into the unknown, ultimately finding a “New World” after surviving the harrowing voyage across waters unknown.  This New World represented opportunities for a better life for immigrants.  Those 15^th Century Columbian-qualities of boldness, exploration, and industry were also modern American qualities to be admired in the Italian-American population, which was contributing to the fast-growing United States and its own vibrant communities.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed “Columbus Day” as a national holiday in 1934.  In the midst of the Great Depression, a proud moment for Italian-Americans had been realized.  In 1941, Benito Mussolini would join with his German counterpart in declaring war on the United States of America following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Many Italian-Americans willingly and cheerfully enlisted in the military to fight against their former homeland, a further affirmation of their community’s loyalty and the “American-ness” of the Italian-American population.

On the other side of the coin, the arrival of Columbus represents the decline of the native peoples who had inhabited the western hemisphere for thousands of years and were reduced within four centuries, to near-total annihilation and subjection.  When Columbus’ first boat was lowered from his ship and he set foot on land, he effectively sealed the fates of the Taino and Carib natives there.  Each Spanish ship which followed meant the Native Americans’ way of life and very lives themselves were at risk from diseases against which they had no immunity, enslavement, and war.  Once the Spanish had made their foothold in America, other European countries began colonizing the western hemisphere.  Native power and sovereignty, which had existed for dozens of centuries, would rapidly vanish.

Governor Murphy made a good faith effort to recognize and praise both the Native American and Italian-American communities of the Garden State, neither of which are necessarily antagonistic toward one another, both of which continue to contribute to the fabric of New Jersey, and share the same American hopes, dreams, and values.  Perhaps only once that is recognized, and equally respected, might the Culture War, stoked by both sides of the aisle for scoring their own points and dividing Americans against each other, start to subside.  But for now, and especially headed into the 2022 election, identity politics remain a powerful weapon in the electoral arsenal of candidates around the state.