By Davis Carlton

The academic tradition of the West is thoroughly steeped in the study of classical literature, architecture, music, and philosophy. The Christianization of the West allowed Europeans to view their classical heritage through the lens of a Christian worldview, which necessarily resulted in a rejection of certain aspects of classical philosophy as well as pagan polytheism. Nevertheless, there remained a ubiquitous understanding of the classics as the common heritage of the West that was indispensable to our identity.

It was standard for the educated classes to be well-versed in Greek and Latin in order to read the classics in their original languages. Operas, plays, and oratorios were replete with references to the legends of antiquity. Knowledge of the classics was so common that ordinary Europeans and North Americans were well-versed in references to the classics in novels and plays written for commoners. In his work defending the traditional attribution of Shakespeare’s literature to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, David Kathman notes that Shakespeare’s knowledge of the classics wasn’t uncommon among Elizabethan poets.

“Shakespeare actually displays remarkably less classical knowledge than his average contemporary poet. In an era when grammar school children read more extensively in Latin and Greek authors than most university classics majors today, Shakespeare’s knowledge of the classics is singularly unremarkable, just what we would expect from a writer educated in a grammar school but not a university.”¹

Naturally those who hate white people and the Western civilization that they created are bound to take aim at such an integral foundation for our identity. Enter Dan-el Padilla Peralta, an ethnically black African Princeton University classics professor who has been transplanted from his native Dominican Republic. I came across a story that seems a fitting summation of the complete ruin that defines America’s once great academic landscape. The New York Times article profiles Padilla’s desire to either radically transform the study of the classics or kill the field altogether. Like most faculty at America’s colleges and universities, Padilla hates “whiteness,” which is a very thinly veiled reference to hatred of white people.

Padilla joined other members of the Princeton faculty to declare that “Anti-Blackness is foundational to America.” This statement is completely mainstream within America’s current academic landscape and therefore unsurprising. What is striking is that Padilla could utter such a statement given his own history. His family left the Dominican Republic only to settle in New York City as illegal immigrants. His father eventually abandoned the family and returned to the Dominican Republic, essentially abandoning his family to the charity of the U.S. government. Padilla’s younger brother was an anchor baby, so his automatic citizenship entitled the family to a modest monthly stipend. The Times article remarks that “it was barely enough to feed one child, let alone a family of three” while recounting other difficult aspects of Padilla’s early life. The sense one gets is that Padilla’s resentment over his difficulties during his childhood stemming from his father’s abandonment became focused upon America and its white history and culture.

Padilla studied the classics as a hobby and was later discovered and accepted into elite New York prep schools and was ultimately accepted into Princeton on a full scholarship. Padilla was torn between two worlds: classical scholarship meant that Padilla was often the only non-white in his classes and his friends would ask him, “What are you doing with this blanquito (white) stuff? How is this going to help us?” Padilla argued that shunning the classics would only reinforce the notion that there were pursuits that weren’t for black people, and excelling academically helped him to topple expectations of what blacks could accomplish. Today Padilla seeks to either radically transform the study of the classics or entirely eliminate the field. What happened?

Padilla advocates changing classical studies in order to “explode the canon” and “overhaul the discipline from nuts to bolts,” even to the point of doing away with the label “classics.” Padilla insists that he’s “not interested in demolition for demolition’s sake. I want to build something.” That’s nice, but what exactly is the problem with classical studies according to Padilla? The answer he gives is whiteness; by which he means white culture and history. The classics were written by white historians, poets, and story-tellers. They recount the civilization of Greeks and Romans, who in spite of the attempts of fringe revisionists, are still universally recognized to be white. The concept of racism has been used to attack white identity implicitly since the term was first coined, but our enemies have abandoned any pretense that anti-racism has anything to do with justice.

Condemning “racism” is now explicitly aimed at white people. A New York City High School has identified “8 levels of whiteness” with the explicit goal of abolishing the white race. For some time Rational Wiki accused (and continues to accuse) white advocates of “nutpicking” by pointing to the same language used by the late Harvard professor Noel Ignatiev. Welcome to the asylum! Coca-Cola has gained notoriety by telling employees during “diversity training” to “try to be less white.” Padilla’s war path against “whiteness” should surprise no one given the trajectory of academia over the past several decades.

Can the classics be successfully separated from the whiteness that Padilla and others so desperately despise? No, classical antiquity will always be considered by those who despise “whiteness” as detestable “blanquito stuff.” Padilla hopes that “When folks think of classics, I would want them to think about folks of color,” but this is not going to happen. Contemporary efforts to place non-whites within the historical context of white nations fail to convince anyone with even basic knowledge of history. Few blacks really care to be represented in early nineteenth century Britain as in the Netflix series Bridgerton. Translations of Homer and Plutarch into Wakandan aren’t likely to generate a great deal of excitement, either. Most blacks would prefer to see themselves in a cultural context that is more thoroughly African, even if that is the mythological history presented in the movie Black Panther.

Efforts to thoroughly revise history on the order envisioned by Padilla aren’t likely to be successful with those stubborn enough to read books instead of basing their knowledge of history on Netflix. The only alternative is to destroy the study of the classics itself. This is a solution that Padilla considers pursuing in the likely event that the push to revise history isn’t successful. After a panel discussion in which Padilla was a participant, a woman in the audience objected to Padilla’s opposition to traditional classical scholarship. She stated, “I believe in merit. I don’t look at the color of the author.” After pointing at Padilla she said, “You may have got your job because you’re Black, but I would prefer to think you got your job because of merit.”

Padilla’s response speaks volumes: “Here’s what I have to say about the vision of classics that you outlined. I want nothing to do with it. I hope the field dies that you’ve outlined, and that it dies as swiftly as possible.” To be clear, Padilla wants to eliminate the concept of merit as an essential feature of “whiteness” that is bound up in the classics. Padilla also rejects the Western academic tradition of open discourse: “I don’t see things like free speech or the exchange of ideas as ends in themselves. I have to be honest about that. I see them as a means to the end of human flourishing.”

There are reasonable limits to speech that civilized societies have imposed. There is good reason to penalize anti-Christian blasphemy and lewdness, but Padilla’s response is given to a professor who expressed concern that the environment of academic censorship would punish anything that was perceived as “racist research.” To leftist academics like Padilla, the concepts of objectivity, merit, and open discourse are a threat to “human flourishing.” I find Padilla to be particularly disgusting in light of his entrenched position at Princeton University. Padilla has benefited tremendously from prominent Western universities, receiving scholarships and degrees from Oxford and Stanford in addition to Princeton.

I don’t doubt Padilla’s intelligence, but it’s also likely that these institutions actively sought out Padilla as a black student in order to fulfill their own self-imposed diversity quotas. And yet all Padilla can do is smear America for its supposed “Anti-Blackness.” This ignores that blacks in America enjoy the highest standard of living compared with blacks anywhere else in the world, and if Padilla really believed that what he said was true, he would have left long ago. Instead Padilla is content to rest on the laurels of his Ivy League sinecure while openly destroying academia from within. Unfortunately Padilla is not the exception to the rule; he is simply a spokesman for opinions that are common among the Western academic establishment.

Padilla represents a perfect example of egalitarian envy. Padilla envies the role that Western nations have played in the history of civilization. Lacking the ability to revise history, he seeks to destroy admiration for the excellence of the classical tradition. Padilla’s response is typical of those who reject the Christian worldview. Padilla responds with envy and anger when confronted with the superior culture of classical European antiquity. Historically Christian converts in Europe responded by interpreting the classical tradition through the lens of a Christian worldview and pursued the excellence that was exemplified in the accounts of the great classical writers. This lead to the “barbarian” Germans and Scandinavians taking on the heroic traits that they admired from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Today, non-white residents of white countries like Padilla look at white history and cultural symbols with nothing but contempt and disdain, and this only reinforces the reality that different racial and ethnic groups need to separate in order to establish a lasting Christian peace.

1 Shakespeare’s Knowledge of Italy, The Classics, and The Law by David Kathman. Kathman’s specific comment is found here.