John Gast captured the hopes of an earlier America in a painting of Columbia called American Progress (1872). The painting is said to be an “allegorical representation of the Manifest Destiny and the modernization of the new west,” but looking through today’s über-sensitive identity lenses, many of us will see that the painting embodies nothing more than white supremacy.
The twenty-foot-tall statue that looms majestically above the District of Columbia is named the “Statue of Freedom,” and to the surprise of many, the bronze sculpture is not a noble Indian, but rather a white woman, inspired by the American goddess “Columbia.”Select your answer to see how you score.