Old Dead White Men Are Human Too

William is tired of your nonsense.

Last night, I saw this article in the Washington Post about a teacher who thinks we shouldn't teach Shakespeare because he's old and white.

I kinda freaked out.

I'm stomping my feet like Al Gore I'm so freaking mad about this holy Cthulhu

— Isaac Morrison (@Thorrison) June 15, 2015

I reacted this way not because I think Shakespeare is the only author worth reading, or that a teacher can't reasonably exclude or include certain authors for a variety of reasons. I object so profusely because this person's reasoning behind her claim is... well...

"Shakespeare lived in a pretty small world." WHAT THE

— Isaac Morrison (@Thorrison) June 15, 2015

"It might now be appropriate for us to acknowledge him as chronicler of life as he saw it 450 years ago and leave it at that." WHAT. WHAAAT.

— Isaac Morrison (@Thorrison) June 15, 2015

All in all, this teacher's objections to Shakespeare strike me as astoundingly ignorant and dangerously narrow-minded. The idea that Shakespeare "lived in a pretty small world" is utterly preposterous. As I so eloquently objected on Twitter:

Yeah, that 16th century was so bland, what with its COPERNICAN REVOLUTION and ELIZABETH THE FIRST and SIR FRANCIS DRAKE CIRCUMNAVIGATING

— Isaac Morrison (@Thorrison) June 15, 2015

I mean, really, to call a time in which Shakespeare's contemporary countryman literally went around the entire world "small" is ridiculous. Not to mention that arguably his most famous and iconic play, Romeo and Juliet, isn't even set in England (and neither is his final play, The Tempest).

The more egregious claim to me, though, is the idea that Shakespeare (or any author) was a mere "chronicler" of his time. I, again, objected with erudition:

He "chronicled" ANCIENT ROME and FOURTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH KINGS AND SUCH. He wasn't a freaking gossip columnist for [redacted] sake.

— Isaac Morrison (@Thorrison) June 15, 2015

If you know anything about Shakespeare, you know that about half of his plays are set in historical England or ancient Rome. He even combines the two in Cymbeline, set in Roman-occupied Britain. He barely wrote about "life 450 years ago" at all. Shakespeare was greatly concerned with the past, and not only that of his own nation.

This teacher's "solution" to what she perceives as a problem is nonsensical. The way to expand your students' horizons is not to "dispense with our Eurocentric presentation of the literary world." She treats education like a zero-sum game; this simply isn't true. And as a friend pointed out, to argue African oral traditions deserve "equal time and value" with Shakespeare while arguing not to teach Shakespeare is to argue not to teach African oral tradition. That an English teacher would have such poor communication skills is worrying.

The real heart of the matter is what she thinks is the problem: that something from a different time or a different ethnicity is irrelevant to a student of a modern age and particular heritage. This response, also from the Washington Post, articulates my objection well:

I teach at a rural South Carolina school with a mostly white population—should I only teach white authors? Will all of my white students feel an immediate kinship to Faulkner or Hemingway to Twain?  Will all of my female students see themselves perfectly in the characters of Flannery O’Connor? Will all of my black students read A Raisin in the Sun and immediately connect to the desperation and inner turmoil of Walter Younger?  Obviously not.

To think you can only learn from someone externally the same as you is foolish and misses the point of literature entirely. Shakespeare doesn't write merely to communicate the experience of White Noble named Hamlet (and, by the way, another prominent Shakespeare character, Othello, ain't even white). He's writing about human experience. Jealousy. Rage. Depression. Suicide. Madness. Love. Prejudice. Confusion. Virtue. Cowardice. Debauchery. Treachery. Forgiveness. Can someone who wasn't a white Englishman in 1590 really not relate to these things, expressed with mastery and eloquence? Is the aim of studying literature really to seek out people exactly like us and throw away the rest as irrelevant to our own lives? No.

Segregating ourselves by external features and dismissing the commonality of the human experience is tragic. It pigeonholes us into mere ethnic specimens and actually limits our individuality. Empathetic, intellectually curious humans can find themselves in Shakespeare, Dante, Hemingway, Chinua Achebe, Sun Tzu, or any author or literature that deals with humanity.

You shouldn't teach "only" Shakespeare. You shouldn't teach "only" anything. Shakespeare certainly didn't think so. Why would he write about Julius Caesar if he was only concerned with the Englishman's experience? If Shakespeare thought a 1700-year-old Italian man was worth writing about, surely we can accept that a 450-year-old Englishman is worth reading.