Why Ron DeSantis Is Wrong about Western Civilization

In a January 2023 press release, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called for legislation to “ensure Florida’s public universities and colleges are grounded in the history and philosophy of Western Civilization…” Some of DeSantis’ ideas were then incorporated in to Florida Senate Bill 266, which passed the legislature and was signed into law by DeSantis in May 2023. What DeSantis’ views and the Florida law ignore is that a university education cannot be complete or true if the curriculum emphasizes only “Western Civilization.”

To begin with, “Western Civilization” cannot be properly understood or appreciated in isolation from the rest of the world. Take one key facet of “Western Civilization”: Christianity. That religion began in the Middle East, and it developed primarily out of spiritual traditions outside the West, including Judaism. In fact, none of the world’s major religions started in Western Europe or the United States, so a university education “grounded in the history and philosophy of Western Civilization” leaves out most spiritual traditions, among so many other things.

Take another example, this one from literature. What could be more quintessential about the literature of “Western Civilization” than the work of Shakespeare? The sonnet structure that Shakespeare used for most of his poems developed in Sicily during the 13th century CE. It was highly influenced by the ghazal, a poetic form created in neighboring Arab lands, a form that dates from the five centuries earlier than the sonnet. Not only that, rhymed poetry like the sonnet didn’t even exist in “Western Civilization” until the Middle Ages—Homer and Virgil didn’t write in rhyme. Western European poets borrowed rhyme from Arabic poetry, and from the verses of the Qu’ran, when Muslim civilization was flourishing in Spain.

Don’t even get me started on Shakespeare and the ridiculous set of laws that conservatives have enacted or proposed to limit drag shows. Do the reactionaries advocating that censorship realize that every female character in a Shakespeare play was performed in the Bard’s time by a man in drag, from Juliet to Cordelia to Queen Gertrude? If you really want to talk about “Western Civilization,” you can’t possibly discuss it without talking about the importance of female impersonators.

Another example: the democratic system in the United States, presumably a feature of “Western Civilization” that DeSantis believes in, was highly influenced by the organizing principles of the Iroquois Confederacy, which date back to the 12th century. To explain American democracy without that context is misleading and untrue.

Not only is it wrong intellectually to view “Western Civilization” in a vacuum, it is also extremely limiting for students. Why should students not learn about many of the world’s religions, philosophies, and cultures, and grow to appreciate the best in each tradition? If those in the West want to understand their own culture in three dimensions, one great way to do that is to step outside it and see it from the standpoint of other societies.

The current right-wing obsession with “Western Civilization” has little to do with education and truthfulness, and everything to do with race. By “Western Civilization,” politicians like DeSantis really mean White culture. The phrase “Western Civilization” serves as a dog-whistle to inform reactionary Caucasians that their interests and culture will be favored under a Republican administration. Not only that, the campaign of reactionaries in the United States and elsewhere to favor “Western Civilization” is scarily reminiscent of the Nazis banning culture that they considered “decadent,” namely any art not created by Aryans.

The Republicans and their allies outside the United States are hawking a myth. “Western Civilization,” like all civilizations, has great strengths and weaknesses, but it cannot have meaning and depth without understanding it in the context of world culture. Why deprive students of the full spectrum of global history and philosophy? By expanding the latitudes and longitudes of our knowledge, we only deepen our understanding of all cultures. And that should be the goal of a university education.

Zack’s memoir about his father, the writer Lee Rogow: Hugging My Father’s Ghost

Zack’s most recent book of poems, Irreverent Litanies

Other posts of interest:

How to Get Published

Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop

How Not to Become a Literary Dropout

Putting Together a Book Manuscript

Working with a Writing Mentor

How to Deliver Your Message

Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?

Why Write Poetry?

Poetic Forms: Introduction, the Sonnet, the Sestina, the Ghazal, the Tanka, the Villanelle

Praise and Lament

How to Be an American Writer

Writers and Collaboration

Types of Closure in Poetry

Huck Finn Revisited

I first read Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in secondary school. At the time, the book hadn’t yet generated the volume of controversy that it has provoked in recent decades. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a regular on the American Library Association’s list of books most frequently banned in schools because of its attitudes on race. Ironically, the book was originally banned not long after it was published in 1884 by those who found its attitudes toward race and religion too radical and progressive. Still, I'm sympathetic to those parents who don’t think the novel is suitable as a textbook for their children.

Listening to the audiobook recently, my reactions to Twain’s disputed classic were varied. I found myself laughing out loud at certain passages, but seriously troubled by some of his portrayals of black characters, especially Jim.

One of my favorite parts of the book was Twain’s portrayal of Tom Sawyer’s gullible Aunt Sally, and Sister Hotchkiss’s hilarious speech mannerisms:

“You may well say it, Brer Hightower!  It's jist as I was a-sayin’ to Brer Phelps, his own self.  S’e, what do you think of it, Sister Hotchkiss, s’e? Think o’ what, Brer Phelps, s’I?  Think o’ that bed-leg sawed off that a way, s’e?  think of it, s’I?  I lay it never sawed itself off, s’I—somebody sawed it, s’I; that’s my opinion, take it or leave it, it mayn’t be no 'count, s’I, but sich as ‘t is, it’s my opinion, s’I, ‘n’ if any body k’n start a better one, s’I, let him do it, s’I, that's all.”

Twain’s comical shortening of the phrases “says I” and “says he” does justice to the way that American slang can accordion long phrases into monosyllables. I was sitting on the 24 Divisadero bus in San Francisco not long ago, and one of the passengers was inadvertently delivering what amounted to a Mark Twain monologue to a friend sitting next to him. The passenger finished every sentence with, “Nohmsayn,” which I swear he pronounced as one syllable, even though the meaning was eight syllables long: “Do you know what I am saying?” His speech reminded me so much of Twain's Aunt Sally character.

In recording American idioms with loving authenticity, Twain was both poking fun of, and paying homage to, the speech of the common individual. He was honoring equality and democracy at a time when writers were generally expected to parrot the king’s English.

Twain’s vision of democracy versus royalty also emerges in the book’s characterizations. Two of the most unlikeable characters in the book are the shyster vagabonds who call themselves the King and the Duke and pretend to be descended from royalty. From the point of view of Jim and Huck, they are just like royalty in their lazy and parasitic way of life.

But not everything in Twain’s book is democratic. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain mocks superstitious African Americans who are easily taken in, but the whites in the book don’t come across much better. Even so, there is an oddness to the gullibility of Jim and the other blacks Twain paints in the book. Huck seems to be able to fool black people at will into thinking that something they have just witnessed with their own eyes never happened. That willingness of the black characters to believe something contrary to their own senses doesn’t feel either funny or realistic to me.

So I would hesitate to give The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn either a simple thumbs up or a thumbs down. I don’t know that I personally would teach it to young people because of the stereotypes and the incessant use of the “n” word. I can understand parents being upset by those features of the book and not wanting their children to read it at a young age. But other aspects of the book are terrific. And it is laugh-out-loud funny in a great many places. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not a book that I would be quick to judge in either a positive or a negative way. It’s a much more nuanced case, in my opinion.

So, what is the takeaway for writers, here? Even though Twain's book was farsighted for its time, it feels antiquated in many ways now. It's not enough for writers to be just a few years ahead of public opinion. Writers need to have the vision to imagine their work being read a hundred years or more in the future, and to conceive their own mission as an artist with the enlightened eyes (one can only hope!) of the next century.

Zack’s most recent book of poems, Irreverent Litanies
Zack’s most recent translation, Bérénice 1934–44: An Actress in Occupied Paris by Isabelle Stibbe

Other recent posts about writing topics: 
How to Get Published
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry? 
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka, The Villanelle
Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer
Writers and Collaboration
Types of Closure in Poetry