Dead White Males Speak

While following links in an online community, I found 11th Carnival of Principled Government: Things our (Founding) Fathers told us, part of the Question the Culture blog. The blog's subtitle is, "Who said it? What makes you think so? Why do we do what we do? When did truth become optional? Where do we go from here? How do you know it's true?"

This post is mostly a set of quotations by the likes of Samuel Adams, Joseph Story, and James Wilson: "dead white males," a phrase that seems to be all the rage in academia (I got 574 hits with it on Google Scholar). I'll get back to DWM later.

"11th Carnival of Principled Government: Things our (Founding) Fathers told us" was a fun read for me, since I still think that the remarkable collection of people two and a half centuries back, on the east coast of North America, had some very good ideas.

Also, I like to be reminded now and again that "principled government" isn't an oxymoron, like "cold fire" or "honest politician." Oops there I go again.

I took one of my favorite quotes from the page, pulled it apart to give it a style that's easier to read on the Web, and put in in this post. I think the reason I like this particular quote is that it shows the thoughts of someone who was willing to

• Establish long-range goals, and
• Struggle for something that his grandchildren, perhaps, might see fulfilled

It's something that I have seen very little of in my life. Perhaps being having a 'long view' of things is a gift reserved for a few, or perhaps we are not encouraged to see existence that way.

At any rate, here's the (mildly paraphrased) quote:

• I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy
• My sons ought to study
  • mathematics
  • philosophy
  • geography
  • natural history
  • naval architecture
  • navigation
  • commerce
  • agriculture
• in order to give their children a right to study
  • painting
  • poetry
  • music
  • architecture
  • statuary
  • tapestry
  • porcelain

John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 1780.

Back to Dead White Males: Despite its being a common, even popular, phrase among academicians, the source of "dead white males" seems to be obscure. Bartleby.com doesn't seem to know who coined the phrase, and neither does QuotationsPage.com. Wikipedia seems silent on the subject - in fact, the latter site heads their page dealing with the phrase with the warning, "The neutrality of this article is disputed." That's understandable: there was even a link to a page on political correctness. About the anonymous origin: I suppose that the phrase could have popped up without anyone noticing.