From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 19:21:12 GMT


                               Wednesday, the 26th of August, 1992

Michelle Manes writes:
  I never asserted the classical Greeks were non-white, or I did not
  mean to.  I meant to imply that I was unsure which category they
  belonged in.

Actually this unsureness is probably quite accurate, since they
didn't think of race in quite the same way we do. There were
Greeks and then there were _hoi barbaroi_. 

               I did not want to include them as "nonwhites," but I
  didn't want to imply they were white (as in modernish European).

I noticed a book on the stacks of the science library here one day when
I was wading (slowly) over towards the physics books. It was titled (something
like) _Race Hygeine_ by a Thurmon Brooks Rice and seemed to be about
eugenics, written in the early 30s by this professor and M.D. at the
Indiana University School of Medicine. I skimmed it because it was kind
of interesting to see that this stuff had so much legitimacy once upon a time.
All about the medical and genetic importance of avoiding miscegenation, 
diluting the superior, white bloodline. And it certainly displays as a given
that immigrants from southern and eastern Europe are genetically the less
than immigrants from northern and western Europe. Rice would have
thought northern European for ``white'', certainly. He would have
been a fair target for Michael's taunt of ``Afrikaaner''. But, though I
think vestiges of this kind of extreme racism still exist, I also
think that we're so used to filling out forms that ask us our race
and on these forms (usually for the purpose of reporting affirmative
action statistics to the government) ``white'' always means that
you're not a member of some targeted minority group, that I suspect
Clayton's usage was 100% innocent of any fell purpose. Clayton wasn't
claiming they were blond and blue-eyed. In other words,
I've never seen a functional classification treating Mediterraneans as
as part of a different group than Scandinavians (in late twentieth
century North America, that is).

        He mentioned Plato and Cervantes.  As someone else pointed out,
  Cervantes is a tough call -- is Spanish a white race too?

There are levels and relatives of cultural differentiation involved. For
instance, in North American society, Latinos are a targeted minority group.
But ``Latino'' I think means ``from Latin America'' and not really ``from
Spain''. Of course, within Latin America, Latino, or rather Ladino, means
Spanish-blooded, or a member of the privileged European class, distinct
from Indians and mestizos. Cervantes is such a part of the mainstream
of the Western canon that I think if you do characterize that canon as
white, then you're bound to call him white. Or if you call him nonwhite,
then you're bound to admit the canon is more color-blind than some
would like to paint it.

You know it occurs to me if we're talking particularly about
the Britannica Great Books set, we should keep in mind
that the set is geared to America and Americans (i.e. toward
understanding the history of ideas leading up to and past
the Founding of the United States). It's for readers of English.
In other words, I think a French canonizer of the stripe of Mortimer
Adler would come up with different books, especially in the more modern
parts of the set. Or, given that English is a northern
European language, and that the set is made for American readers
of English, it's sensible to me that many northern Europeans, and
in particular English authors, should show up in the set.

               Mike Morris
         (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)


Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:15185 rec.humor:27218 alt.folklore.urban:22289 rec.arts.sf.misc:2720