Racism is Alive and Well in ELA in 2026

Have you heard of classical education? It's a thing. There are schools around the country whose sole focus is to teach young people Eurocentric literature. Consider this Heritage Foundation site (yep, that foundation) offering a database of classical schools, if you don't believe me. 

In classical education, students learn Latin and focus on White European literature because it's the "best of literature and poetry" and it "forms better human beings." In this article for the magazine "The Classical Teacher," Cheryl Lowe writes this and more. She goes on to explain how the choices made in classical schools and with this one particular curriculum she's describing (I'm not going to name it because I'm not giving it extra attention.) are "not random." "We put great thought into what we feel gives students the most meaningful experience, leading them in a connected, cohesive way to becoming whole human beings," she writes. "Becoming whole human beings"... 

The most offensive element (to me) of this White supremacist position is that she (and henceforth I'll start using they because she isn't alone.) truly believes that outside of Europe there is nothing worthy of academic study in order for a student to be a whole human. The erasure. The disrespect. Is there really no author worthy of intellectual attention from the entire continent of Africa? Is there absolutely not one piece of literature that could be considered classical from the continent of Asia? Are none of the numerous globally recognized authors from Latin America deserving of analysis? No? Just the guys from Europe? And that makes students whole people. 

This is talking about me. It is talking about my people. It is talking about many of you, too, because we are the global majority. And the thing about literature that we do agree on is that it does have a deep impact on people and it does help us grow as humans. Yet, that racist Eurocentric literature produces a racist Eurocentric imagination. The type of imagination that allows a group of friends to either murder or allow their Black friend to die and then cover it up. It's the same imagination that allows Brown people to be assaulted and attacked in the light of day and sequestered into cage-like places. It's the same imagination that sees a Black man on the street and immediately concludes "danger, threat, violence" and aims. This isn't just a culture war or a difference of opinion. This is intellectual, narrative, and cultural racism and it leads to racist violence. 

Classical education is racist. It is an iteration of White supremacy ideology. 

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