The Birth of a Muthos
As a part of the tradition of black female resistance in the Classics, my mere presence embodies a reality that most in the field do not want to consider. And that makes them lazy scholars.
At the dawn of this new year and decade, I was in a much deeper introspective mood than usual — if hindsight is 2020, then call me Epimetheus — and found myself in quite the quandary. There was much I wanted to do in the new decade, yet felt if I tried to break through new ground without addressing some deep-running issues, then I ran the risk of not being able to grow and create to my fullest potential. One particular issue needed to be addressed: I was a black female classicist active in the field.
I felt an increasing urge to speak on just how my identity has impacted my experience of the field — but the more I thought about it, the more circular the question became. Sometime in the morning on January 11th, I saw a tweet from Oxford Classicists of Colour on Twitter calling to hear from different classicists of color on how race has impacted their experience of Classics. I saw replies from different classicists of color and saw glimpses of empathy and solidarity with experiences that I’d also had, but it also resonated with an uncomfortable reality that I was forced to acknowledge head-on: that among many classicists of color I am frequently either the only American, the only black person, or both. I had to acknowledge that even though my whole life I’ve always said that I’m the last person anyone should listen to about the “black experience” (I’m lightskinned as hell and colorism is real y’all), I do identify as black, I was socialized as black, and I have an experience to share. So I stitched a structure together in a string of tweets, and this piece is the end result of that, fleshed out a bit.
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?
To do this, I need to go to a place of storytelling and emotional excess to help me compose the narrative structure of my experience which is both intensely personal and starkly political. I can’t not be colloquial when doing simultaneous introspection and structural analysis.
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 — key pillars in ideology.
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/00s 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 even if hadn’t 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 kept going to other fields and areas of history throughout college and didn’t even fully commit to Classics until my last year as a result.
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 helped to 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 were black efforts into classicism constantly downplayed throughout the narrative of classical academic history in America?
Unfortunately, this is the point many classicists of color reach — recognizing the history of the field itself and how much it has 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. 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. When you start poking around the structures that support racism in America and look at the academic training of the people who hold power and influence, you see Classics as a constant presence.
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 you 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 anyone who’s been through it to tell them what it’s like.
This is what it means for your personal to be political: On the one hand, you have to reflect that your entire experience in the field has been defined by struggle, resistance, and issues of personhood, which is very intimate and vulnerable. On the other hand, you have lived experience in the exact area that your colleagues are pondering, and you’re trying to be a good scholar so you’re really trying not to think less of your peers who are only privileging a singular type of opinion to address a vast systemic structural issue.
And all the while, you are all inside of the institution that you work in, the institution that made its name based on famous scholars, one of whom (ayy Dunning) whose school of thought he produced in said institution was regularly cited as the justification for academic Jim Crow, aka the heart of the disparity of the current American school system. And he studied Classics. And now you’re here. Studying Classics. Black. Female. Queer. What does that historical echo even mean?
Where was I…? Right, dissociation. So yeah, it’s just the damn snake eating its tail. If I tell my 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, and yet 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, as do many issues around inclusivity across academia. It also means work. If our field uncovers these answers, we will be at moral obligation to address them. Which we should, as we are trying to be educators and researchers in America. This means that 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 classicist means that you have to use your identity as a rhetorical device to convince your colleagues into being better scholars and justify why they do what they do in the field. I find myself constantly having to challenge classicists to explain to me why what they do is worth doing, and yet that should be at the core basis of education. Amidst all the discourse on how to make the field relevant, I try to insist that instead we should focus on what people want to do, what they don’t want to do, and to what extent.
I know who I am. What I want to do. And to what extent. 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?
—
So how has race impacted my experience of the Classics… I guess I said it in the beginning. As an ouroboros. How does one contend with a structure of infinite consumption?
I have no idea. But one of my best-friends-in-triplicate always breaks it down to me in etymology — radical systemic change can only happen at the root. So for me, while I watch my colleagues ponder and debate the future of the field, I have to do a reverse-metaphysics and dig into the roots of the field itself to understand the best way to utilize it to enact change.
I would encourage other frustrated classicists wanting to find answers to delve into their own identities and histories with Classics in conjunction with our own blind spots in the history of the field, particularly the utilization of classical studies across marginalized groups. And if you find the concept of personal introspection interwoven with historical academic pursuits not worth your time well then…and I mean this genuinely…
Why are you a classicist?
