Tom Breen Photo
Columbus statue being removed from park pedestal.
She asked, “Are you American?”
I wasn’t sure she was talking to me. Perhaps someone behind me. But there was no one behind me, as we sat spaced apart in a tent outside of a complex of personal service shops, both of us awaiting our turn to enter one or the other.
“I am an American,” I said.
“I’m interested in your opinion then.” I could hear a heavy Eastern European accent in her voice, noted that her hair had just been colored jet black, and that she appeared to be as old or older than my own 76 years.
She asked, “What do you think about the Columbus statue?”
“Hmm,” I said. I hadn’t anticipated being grilled on the subject as I awaited a socially distant pedicure. But of course Columbus was, and had remained, a subject of consuming interest locally ever since authorities decided to remove a statue of the explorer from Wooster Square several days ago.
She did not wait for me to get around to answering. “I think it’s crazy,” she said.
“What’s crazy?” I asked.
“To take down the statue. To erase the history.”
At that point, I had a choice. One instinct, short-lived, was to engage in the matter on its merits. To say something like, “I can see both sides of the issue.” Yes, that would have probably sufficed, gotten me through the moment, though I abhor the 50 – 50 approach. Nothing is 50 – 50, particularly the odds that a person of a mature age can get through these days without being summoned to testify in the Court of Moral and Cultural Affairs.
I could have said, “We all know of the discrimination that Italians faced when they came to America,” and that the statue represents more than Columbus’s achievements in his four voyages to the new world. And that it was remarkable for its time – built and financed in 1892 by an oppressed community of immigrants in a time when only the statues of “real Americans” were common. “People of Italian heritage point with pride to the legacy.”
Or I might have said, “Well, the legacy is a tough one, really.” But what would have been the point of going into the many witnesses on Hispaniola who charged Columbus with serious crimes while governing the island, including the cutting out of tongues, dismemberment, murder, and other inhumane summary judgment?
I instead, I decided, as I often do, just to listen, for that has been important over the decades to the work I do as a writer. I knew the temperature of our conversation would revert to normal if she talked awhile, and I could hear her reasons.
I was curious. Why would a woman from the Czech Republic (she revealed this at some point during the conversation) have such a deep feeling about the Columbus statue? I wanted to know. And, in the next few minutes, I actually learned something – a gift that often arrives in the heart of a patient listener, though patient listening has been a casualty of our times.
I had been on edge that afternoon, having viewed earlier the video made by the New Haven Independent of a confrontation in Wooster Square between two Black Live Matter protesters and a group of Italian-American men that turned ugly, and the contained perhaps a record number of f‑bombs hurled in various directions, and some pushing, shoving, punching, attempts to reason, and, in the end, a partial reconciliation. “Is what happened in the square a microcosm America?” I asked myself, and was tempted to answer in the affirmative.
But there is nuance in play if the noise doesn’t drown it out, and there are deep feelings that reflect no “both sides” tolerance. The woman from the Czech Republic, after no prodding from me, talked of living her formative years under Communism, and that made the subject of freedom one that supersedes all else. We talked of the rebellion in Hungary in 1956, when Soviet tanks plowed through downtown Budapest, and of outrages closer to her home.
She said that when she thought of America in the years that followed that she had a hero, an actual modern-day savior. That was President Ronald Reagan, “who stood up to the Soviet Union and freed us.”
At that point, of course, I had another choice. I could express my own view of Reagan, much less charitable, and explain why, or I could actually take in what the woman was saying, and try to understand from her point of view how the 40th president became a godsend to the people living under soul-numbing oppression.
I easily chose the latter, and no doubt this choice was influenced by our own collective experiences in the Trump years, when truth has been turned into fiction and when non-whites have seen a return of blatant racism and oppression (voting rights and other basic freedoms) from top levels of the government.
But still, the question of Columbus remained to be solved. Why was she so determined to defend a man who brought suffering to so many?
There has been a move afoot lately of course to lump all statues of controversial men (and so far, all men), in one category, and to say the honor of being recognized in perpetuity in the public square should be limited to angelic figures, of which, at last count, there are none.
However, Ronald Reagan, to my new Czech acquaintance, is an angelic figure. To her, if there were a thousand statues around the land of “the Gipper” it wouldn’t be enough. He is not the president that denied relief and empathy at the start of the AIDS epidemic or whose “Reaganomics” discriminated against the poor.
There are hundreds of honors for Columbus in this country, and for Italian-Americans that number, too, may not be enough. The Czech native seemed to understand that. For she is not one, understandably, to weigh all issues and to render balanced judgment. She was a victim, just as Italian-Americans were victims, and then she became free, just as they did.
Many commentators argue persuasively that the excesses and cruelties of our traditional heroes are not relative, a product of their time. They are instead real, and cruel, and should be recognized as such. Slave owners were never enlightened, because they kept human beings in captivity. Yet each of us, reflecting not only on our own histories but the histories of our fellow citizens of the world, need to show empathy, to listen, and to reach our own informed conclusions about honor and disgrace.
As the Czech immigrant and I ended our foray into recent and not-so-recent history, and a staffer from the nail salon summoned me to come in, my partner in conversation said she enjoyed our brief time together and wished me good luck. I returned the sentiments.
Then, as I walked away, she shouted, “Young man!”
Young man? Indeed compliment. “You forgot your water bottle.”
She was looking out for me.
Tom Breen Photo
Charlie Salerno & Los Fidel lower the temperature, and tackle tough issues, minutes after the fists flew in Wooster Square Park
At one time, New Haven had the highest proportion of Italian-American residents of any U.S. city. Honoring an Italian was and is of special significance to many people in our area.
Today, might it be possible to give the Columbus statue to the Knights of Columbus (which has its headquarters in New Haven) and together with them, or others, install a new statue of a prominent Italian in Wooster Square? Giuseppe Verdi, not only a great composer but also a patriot of Italian reunification, might be one possibility. There are many others.