How does one even begin to describe the ouroboros of being a black classicist in america who grew up in the american public school system and is still a classicist in graduate school?
I guess first you have to establish the overarching ideological power that the American school system has as one of the primary power structures in this society, and one so intrinsically tied with indoctrination/legacy and identity.
And then also growing up hearing that specifically the group of people you look like and maybe count yourself a part of (mixed race identity in the 90s was wild yo) are destined to go from school to prison, and there’s even a catchy name for it.
And school already feels like prison, you know? So you look around for anything to drag you out of it, and sometimes you latch onto things you wouldn’t expect. For me, I was privileged enough to find I was good at theater, orchestra, and Latin.
Latin had a soft spot for me, because I’d already experienced racism in the world of the arts and I came in with a view that the classics were more apolitical—a strange alien culture so removed from our society that it could be the playground of any curious scholar.
However I quickly learned that my physical presence posed an issue to most classical spaces I entered—often regardless if I’d even spoken in those spaces. I realized it was because I represented the potential of an alternative viewpoint that most present did not want to consider.
I had an anxiety attack after turning in my undergraduate thesis on Attic tragedy, because I didn’t know how to go forward in the field or if there were even elders who shared my identity that I could try to emulate and follow. And that’s when a friend found me a resource:
“African American Literature and the Classical Tradition: Black Women Writers from Wheatley to Morrison” by Tracey L. Walters definitely helped ground my purpose in the field, learning that I was a part of a tradition of black female resistance in the classics via the arts.
But also it enraged me—why did it take me finishing my bachelors and having a break down to finally get a glimpse that I had a right to be in the field that I genuinely mostly wanted to be in out of pure curiosity? Also why didn’t history acknowledge these black classicists?
Unfortunately, this is the point many classicists of color reach—realizing the history of the field itself and how much it had been used as a tool of empire and oppression, especially in the nascent beginnings of not only America as a country, but also as an identity.
And that the separation of specifically black Americans from the realms of Greek and Latin has been an ongoing tension on this continent since the 1700s, and one under constant contention. So your life’s basically the riff from Ball of Confusion by the Temptations at this point.
But then you take the opposite approach and start poking around the larger structures that support and institute racism in America and stare at the academic training of the people in power and influencing change and holy craaaaap you see classics everywhere.
So there you are: dissociating in seminar while everyone is questioning what to do about diversity in the field. All the other POC in the room are international students and have only been living in America for a handful of years.
The majority of your white American colleagues went to private school. They can all speak to me about the theoretical horrors of the school to prison pipeline, but it’s that tone of voice where you have to wonder if they’ve ever really asked someone to tell them what it’s like.
All the while in an institution that made its name based on famous scholars, one of whom (ayyyyy Dunning) was cited with the creation of academic Jim Crow, aka the heart of the disparity of the current American academic system. And he studied classics.
Where was I... right, dissociation: so yeah, it’s just the damn snake eating its tail. If you tell your colleagues about the merits of black culture and how we should dive into it to study the classics, they ignore it. But they still want “diversity” in the field.
But they are unwilling to do the hard SCHOLARLY work of analyzing how the reception of the field in this country has impacted not only the way classics are taught, but also the entire field of education in America. Because white classicists are unwilling to admit the obvious:
The history of the field of classics in America is inextricably linked with the creation of white elite identity in America (one of the three main ideological strains—Classicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism) and that’s a lot for an “apolitical” field to unpack.
(Plus it requires an interdisciplinary effort to untangle it, like let’s get our biologist buds to help us drag all the scientific racism out of the field as well) It also means work. If our field uncovers these answers, we are at moral obligation to address them.
Which means classics would have to lead the other humanities in an effort to change and address the American education system. So sometimes and often, being a #ClassicistofColour means having to use your identity to guilt trip your colleagues into being better people.
Because I can’t ignore where I came from, because classicists literally won’t let me, so I have to focus my efforts on making points of access, forcing them if I have to.
Because if I don’t stick up for poor black girls as a valid voice in the field who else—and I mean this genuinely and historically, if you have an answer that’s not a black woman, I’m all ears—will?
