Christopher Columbus was not always white

On Columbus Day, the NY Times editorial board has published an essay reminding the country of how the Italians were once considered outside the boundaries of cultural belonging and over time became assimilated to the mainstream.

In the beginning, “Congress envisioned a white,Protestant and culturally homogeneous America when it declared in 1790 that only “free white persons, who have, or shall migrate into the United States” were eligible to become naturalized citizens. The calculus of racism underwent swift revision when waves of culturally diverse immigrants from the far corners of Europe changed the face of the country.”

Recalling Matthew Frye Jacobson’s history of US immigration, “Whiteness of a Different Color,” the essay describes a national panic that led Americans to adopt a more restrictive, politicized view of how whiteness was to be allocated. During this time, Italian immigrants like Christopher Columbus, went from racialized pariah status in the 19th century to white Americans in good standing in the 20th century.

The federal holiday honoring the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus — celebrated on Monday — was central to the process through which Italian-Americans were fully ratified as white during the 20th century. The rationale for the holiday was steeped in myth [a response to lynchings of 11 Italian immigrants in Louisiana], and allowed Italian-Americans to write a laudatory portrait of themselves into the civic record.

As the editorial team writes, “the history of Columbus Day and Italian immigrants offers a window onto the alchemy through which race is constructed in the United States, and how racial hierarchies can sometimes change.”

MHC