Wiesen’s Herodotus and the Modern Debate over Race and Slavery

Who Am I? What Are You?

I’ll be completely honest; this class has been a bit of a struggle for me. While I appreciated the content and I knew that it was important and even why it was important, it always took me longer than I expected to have a firm grasp of the material. However, I have learned quite a bit about race and the study of it, and I’m going to use Wiesen’s “Herodotus and the Modern Debate over Race and Slavery”, Lucius Outlaw’s “Toward a Critical Theory of Race” as well as Letter of the Emperor Claudius to the Alexandrians to demonstrate what I’ve learned. Simply put, I’ve learned that race can be viewed from a scientific point of view and a religious one, but mannerisms and appearance end up dominating how a person is categorized racially.

So what is race, exactly? Outlaw describes it as,

“…a vehicle for notions deployed in the organizations of these worlds in our encounters with persons who are significantly different from us particularly in terms of physical features (skin color and other anatomical features), but also, often combined with these, when they are different with respect to language, behavior, ideas, and other “cultural” matters.” (Outlaw, 384)

Outlaw is saying that race is a vehicle, and by that I mean a subject we use to carry out or justify certain actions, for how we interpret and organize people with significant differences from each other. However, the most prominent of those classifications is that of appearance. It is so prominent, in fact, that it tends to override arguments made for the others. For example, when Wiesen examined Herodotus’s Histories, he notes, “But for modern readers, Herdotus’ physical proof of national kinship, the Colchians’ blackness, was so startling as to cast h...

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...ll and be forced to question their identity. The play shows that no amount of ignorance or arrogance can save a person from that.

In conclusion, Aeschylus’ Persians has continued to impact the world for centuries upon centuries because it is able to be interpreted multiple ways. In each version, the play centers around the same kernal of truth about identity and belonging and forces the audience to question their privilege—and perhaps, their ignorance—on how war and culture can impact their identity. In any case, all audiences are left pondering the same question that has boggled humans for as long as we have existed: who am I?

4. Length 2-3 sentences (2 pt)

Compare how race has been presented in literature from the classical era with literature from today. What is the cause of these differences/similarities? What does that say about the society in general?