Ancient Greeks can’t. And, in the US, the inclusion of Italians, Greeks, Syrians, Easter Europeans, and some North Africans in the category of “white” has a clear legal history (not to mention social history) that can be recounted. White is a false category that some people cling to for reasons that revolve around the privileges being in the category hold. But whiteness is not now nor has it ever been coterminous with European and that matters when groups like Identity Europa, etc go around claiming “white” superiority. When a racial category has a clearly discernible history of changes, why pretend it is a natural category or that we should not interrogate it? Greek-Americans, along with Italian-Americans and various Middle-Eastern people’s had to fight to become “white” in the courts and through legislation; ancient Greeks were coopted into it by those who excluded their contemporary Greeks from the category.

You aren’t subaltern at this point, though, so it’s silly to pretend you are. But it wasn’t always that way in the US and the category of whiteness itself never applied to any “race” (except women) before the 18th century. Why does this fact upset people so much?

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    Rebecca Futo Kennedy

    Written by

    Classicist, Ancient Historian, Critical Lover of the Classical Past. Blog: https://rfkclassics.blogspot.com/ ; Twitter: @kataplexis