So it is with Christopher Columbus, who got statues and a national holiday for political, and progressive reasons. Columbus Day, and the statues of Columbus all over America, were introduced in the 2oth century in order to promote immigrants' rights. Italian immigrants, and Italian-Americans born in this country, were despised as perpetual foreigners, looked down upon as unassimilable and un-American. Elevating Columbus was part of a larger campaign to assert that immigrants were Americans, too. Being Italian American now is its own thing, heavily diluted and even at its purest divorced from Italian culture.