What Color Is the Past? History, Diversity, and Books for Kids

The headline caught my eye. In the Guardian it read Mary Beard abused on Twitter over Roman Britain’s ethnic diversity. Subtitle, “Classicist says her assertion that there was at least some diversity under Roman rule led to ‘torrent of aggressive insults’.” Apparently the BBC recently released a video for schools in which a high-ranking Roman soldier and father was portrayed as black. Beard, who teaches at Cambridge, supported the video by saying that scholarship indicates that in many places...