Cuomo's defense of Columbus statue proves BLM's point

Today, New York’s governor signed a series of police reform bills in response to the police killing of George Floyd.

Floyd’s death has led to, among other things, calls for the removal of Confederate statues across the country.

But despite his leadership on police reform, Andrew Cuomo is unwilling to clean out his own backyard of another offensive monument: one to Christopher Columbus. His defense of the monument came just one day after Donald Trump argued in favor of keeping the names of Confederate army officers on U.S. military installations.

Interesting.

Columbus didn’t discover the New World, despite the myth (the Vikings got here first). What he did do was use violence to enslave Native Peoples and forcibly convert them to Christianity. In addition, he brought disease to the Americas, which further decimated the native population. The result was a de facto genocide of the Taino people on the island of Hispaniola.

If you ask Cuomo, I’m sure he wouldn’t say, “It’s not OK to enslave blacks, but Native Americans are fair game.” But what he’s implying with his defense of the Columbus monument is this: It’s not OK for Southern whites to enslave people, but if you’re Italian, hey, all is forgiven.

Here’s what he said:

“I understand the feelings about Christopher Columbus and some of his acts, which nobody would support, but the statue has come to represent and signify appreciation for the Italian American contribution to New York. For that reason, I support it.”

Alllllllrighty then.

Let’s substitute a few words in the above declaration, and see how it flies:

I understand the feelings about Confederate generals and some of their acts, which nobody would support, but the statues have come to represent and signify Southern pride. For that reason, I support them.

Not a whole lot of difference there.

But here’s the thing: It’s very possible to be proud about living in the South without waving a Confederate flag. I know. I live in the South, and I like it here. And it’s just as possible to be proud about one’s Italian heritage without putting up a statue to Christopher Columbus. Are we really so narrowly focused as to believe that the only way we can honor our heritage is to erect statues to slaveholders?

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo greets members of the Nnew York Army National Guard's 204th Engineer Battalion responding to flooding the in New York's Finger Lakes and Southern Tier regions. 2018. Public domain.

Cuomo just happens to be Italian himself. To me, an Italian defending a statue of a slaveholding Italian invader sounds a lot like a Southern white supremacist defending a statue of a slaveholding Confederate soldier.

This is not to suggest that Cuomo is a white supremacist. He isn’t. What it is meant to do is to point out the astonishing defensiveness among those of us who are not racial minorities — and, all too often, our refusal to listen when we have a personal stake in the conversation.

I don’t think Cuomo’s a bad guy. But his response illustrates why black Americans so often speak of subtle, yet deeply entrenched racism that those in the majority refuse to acknowledge. What, me racist? Perish the thought! Sadly, though, racism is so thoroughly ingrained in our culture that it’s part and parcel of how we view the world. That explains why we don’t see it. What it doesn’t explain is why we refuse to listen when someone points it out.

The only things that explain that are fear and arrogance.

For some reason, Cuomo fails to see the parallels between a Southern slaveholder and an Italian one. Or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want to see them, and the political pressure these days is focused on the plight of black Americans — not Native Americans.

Regardless, Cuomo just proved what Black Lives Matter activists have been saying for years: Those of us in the white majority are largely tone-deaf to culturally baked-in racism, and we won’t face it until we’re confronted with a video of a police officer killing a black man while kneeling on his neck.

They didn’t make videos in 1492.

I wish they had.

Perhaps then, Cuomo’s response might be different.