How does the ancient world inform the way that we should think about modern issues of race and ethnicity?

Pick ONE of the following questions and answer it in 800 words or more. Make sure to be specific in your answer (dont just generalize). Do not duplicate material from your essays. 1) Benjamin Isaac, in The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, argues that ancient Greek and Roman attitudes towards the Other amounted to (proto-)racism that influenced modern racist theories of the 18th century AD, whereas Erich Gruens Rethinking the Other in Antiquity argues that Greeks, Romans, and Jewshad far more mixed, nuanced, and complex opinions about other peoples because ancients could also visualize themselves as part of a broader cultural heritage, could discover or invent links with other societies, and could couch their own historical memories in terms of a borrowed or appropriated past. Thus, for Gruen ancient racial theories were less about rejection, denigration, or distancing and more about appropriating. Both Isaac and Gruen have a valid point of view, but with whom would you agree? (When answering this question, dont generalize: use specifics from the primary (i.e., ancient) material weve read from class to illustrate your answer). 2) Weve examined a number of cases in this class in which attitudes (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say representations) towards a particular group have changed over time; for example, Athenian attitudes/representations of Persians. What do the changes over time tell us about the nature of racial formation (in the sense of Omi and Winant)? 3) The term person of color suggests that certain populations have skin color whereas others do not, and therefore suggests that skin color is a primary axis of modern racial identity. If skin color is the main determinant of modern race, what in your opinion is the main determinant of ancient race? (I am making you pick just one; justify your answer!) 4) How do artistic representations add to our textual understanding of ancient race? That is to say, most of our evidence for how Greeks and/or Romans understood other group is based on literary texts, but a number of scholars have also turned to art; why? What insights can be gained from the artistic sources that enhances what we can glean from the texts?
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