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From https://eidolon.pub/why-i-teach-about-race-and-ethnicity-in-the-classical-world-ade379722170

Rebecca Futo Kennedy writes, “Discussions of race and ethnicity in the Classical world should not be controversial, at least not among classicists. The topic has been an important area of scholarship almost since the field came into being and it has almost always been political: from the promotion of the so-called Dorian invasion, to theories that race mixing led to the fall of Rome, to the Black Athena debates of the 1980s and ’90s, to continued use of autochthony as a rallying cry. When Dr. Donna Zuckerberg wrote an article last year in this journal encouraging us to incorporate more of it into our research and teaching, I was surprised at how few people within the field came to her defense when she was maligned and received various types of threats for asking us to do something that we should already be doing as responsible scholars, particularly in light of the way classicists had intentionally reinforced theories of white superiority using ancient texts in the past.”

Read her full essay at https://eidolon.pub/why-i-teach-about-race-and-ethnicity-in-the-classical-world-ade379722170

Also, here is a timely bibliography of references that can help medievalists and classicists counter the co-option of their fields by white supremacists: https://sarahemilybond.com/2017/09/10/hold-my-mead-a-bibliography-for-historians-hitting-back-at-white-supremacy/

Here, also, is an introduction to the history of African-Americans and the Classics: http://www.aaihs.org/african-americans-and-the-classics-an-introduction/