Jawel, er zijn ook zwarte classici, die waren er in de 19e eeuw zelfs al, nota bene in Amerika. Dat gaf weleens wat ongemakken. Er is nu een biografie verschenen van een negentiendeeeuwse zwarte classicus, William Sanders Scarborough, geboren als slaaf in Georgia ergens nog voor de burgeroorlog. In de recensie, die ik via Bryn Mawr opgestuurd kreeg, las ik het volgende citaat van de Grote Classicus van Yale, John C. Calhoun:
” … that if he could find a Negro who knew the Greek syntax, he would then believe that the Negro was a human being and should be treated as a man. “
En dit was de reactie van een andere Negerclassicus uit dezelfde tijd, Alexander Crummell:
“Just think of the crude asininity of even a great man! Mr. Calhoun went to Yale, to study the Greek Syntax, and graduated there. His son went to Yale to study the Greek Syntax, and graduated there. His grandson, in recent years, went to Yale, to learn the Greek Syntax, and graduated there. Schools and Colleges were necessary for the Calhouns, and all other white men to learn the Greek syntax. And yet this great man know that there was not a school, nor a college in which a black boy could learn his A.B.C.’s. He know that the law in all the Southern States forbade Negro instruction under the severest penalties. How then was the Negro to learn the Greek syntax? How then was he to evidence to Mr. Calhoun his human nature? Why, it is manifest that Mr. Calhoun expected the Greek syntax to grow in Negro brains by spontaneous generation!”
Miko Flohr, 10/05/2005