On Wednesday, July 22, Philadelphia held hearings on whether the statue of Christopher Columbus should be removed from its place of prominence and honor in the heart of the city’s Italian-American community to a “storage facility.” Many voices were heard, many stories were told, and the statue still stands. 

Regardless of what the city decides, either through its Arts Commission, or the Historical Commission, or by edict from the mayor, it is likely that the statue will remain in its decades-long home when the snows begin to fall. That is because the so-called “consensus” that Columbus was a genocidal racist, and that his stone effigy is a public danger, and that Italian Americans should be ashamed to cling to his memory, is a fabrication that has taken hold of the gullible.