If I could just comment on this part of your essay, despite enthusiastically agreeing with all of it, let me just say that the fact that whiteness is learned is exacerbated by the fact that once learned it’s so hard to eradicate.

For example, most evenings before I go to bed I indulge a little reading in historical linguistics and ancient history on a social media site I like called Quora. For people interested in niche topics, Quora is really cool because you can often get questions answered by serious experts with real writing talent.

So last night I was reading an answer by one of my favorite academic writers answering the question, “Was Cleopatra white or black?”

He began his essay by explaining that nobody in Cleopatra’s time would have understood the question. Whiteness did not exist in ancient times, and skin color was not a factor in determining much of anything in the Roman empire or the Hellenistic world it was situated in.

He then went on to provide some explanations of Cleopatra’s probable lineage and some pretty decent artistic reconstructions of what she probably looked like based on images extent when she was alive.

More illuminating than his answer, though, were the dozens of comments that followed it. People just could not stop asking, “Yes, but was she white?”

They simply could not accept the professor’s explanation that whiteness did not exist when Cleopatra was alive. They could not wrap their minds around it, as if they believe whiteness is a natural order of the universe, that exists whether people think it does or not.