Growing up in New York, one of my favorite rooms in the Metropolitan Museum of Art was the

hall with Greek and Roman sculptures, where the statues strike poses of triumph or rapture

or contemplation, and all of them are made from this milky white marble.

But two millennia ago, when these sculptures were created, they were actually painted in

bright colors.

I remember when I first learned that, I was a little disappointed.

I thought the statues were beautiful as they appeared today.

But I also learned that this veneration of white marble, it has a kind of sinister history.

It's connected to the story of Western civilization, to the elevation of Greek and Roman art over

that of other cultures, and to the elevation of white bodies over those of other people.

My name is Rachel Poser, and I'm a contributor to the New York Times magazine.

I wrote about the study of ancient Greece and Rome, a discipline known as classics, and

about a black professor at Princeton named Denel Padija Peralta, who has become one of the

most respected and controversial academics in his field.

Denel was born in the Dominican Republic, and he grew up undocumented in the United States.

For a while when he was a kid, he lived in homeless shelters throughout New York City,

and it was in one of these shelters that he found a textbook that sparked his fascination

with ancient history.

But over the years his fascination has turned into something more like alarm.

He says the field of classics has become so entangled with white supremacy that it needs

to be broken down completely.

Denel says the problem isn't ancient Greece and Rome.

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