Brian Lerer on WNYC, and we'll close today with a call in for Italian Americans on this week of Indigenous People's Day slash Columbus Day slash Italian Heritage Day.

It's so awkward, right?

The way it is with this kind of shared holiday or a placement holiday

that can leave everybody involved feeling aggrieved and marginalized. So our question is,

would you support disconnecting these holidays and establishing a separate Italian Heritage Day

disconnected from Columbus on another day on the calendar.

Italian American listeners, only you. Would you support disconnecting these holidays and

establishing a separate Italian Heritage Day on another day on the calendar?

212-433 WNYC, 212, 433, 9692.

As we discussed on Monday show, which was Columbus Day slash Indigenous People's Day

slash Italian Heritage Day, Columbus might have sailed the ocean blue in 1492, but it wasn't

until 1934 that Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt made Columbus Day a national holiday.

As CNN tells it, on their website, as waves of Italian immigrants arrived in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

they face prejudice and discrimination.

To combat negative perceptions, a group of Italian-American elites took up the

cause of Columbus Day, arguing that the contributions of Italian immigrants had helped make America

the nation it was. That from CNN. But since the 1970s, indigenous Americans have been fighting

to have their stories taught in public schools and the

Public Square, too, and that includes seeing Columbus in a much more negative light as a pioneer

of massive colonial violence and theft, as you know, at the expense of indigenous communities.

So Italian Americans, what if the U.S. were to just give up Columbus Day and establish a separate Italian Heritage Day some other time during the year to respect both peoples and disconnect the two things?

Would you support that idea? 212-433 WNYC. The way it is, it's so awkward and kind of leaves everyone feeling aggrieved. New York City,

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