Top 100

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The current issue of Atlantic Monthly has a cover article about the 100 most influential Americans. The article-in-full isn't available on-line, but the list is. The top ten are:

1 Abraham Lincoln
2 George Washington
3 Thomas Jefferson
4 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
5 Alexander Hamilton
6 Benjamin Franklin
7 John Marshall
8 Martin Luther King Jr.
9 Thomas Edison
10 Woodrow Wilson

This top ten list left me with two thoughts: First, I'm a little ashamed that most of what I know about Alexander Hamilton is from a Got Milk? commercial.

Second: When I was in graduate school, it was pretty popular to try to avoid groups of "dead white men," whether in literary compilations or in critical review. "Alive white men" were basically in the same category: since it takes decades to earn a scholastic reputation, most of the "awm" would soon be "dwm." What is interesting to me, is that in this list, 9 out of 10 are dwm's and the other is both dead and a man, although not white. And, by the way, the next non-dwm on the list is #30 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, like MLK Jr., shares two of the three criteria.

I had a professor who included in her Victorian Lit reading list a female poet about whom the prof happened to be writing an article. I thought the poetry was juvenile and insipid, and that the only reason it was under consideration was that it was written by a woman. (but that was just my opinion. :) While I appreciate the additions to the Romantic*/Victorian Lit canon of Christina Rosetti, Dorothy Wordsworth, the Brontes, Austen, the Wollstonecrafts, and other talented women, I am disparaging of those who add poor artists into the arena just to balance the percentage of dwm's.

While I support attempts to widen our understanding by including previously ignored voices, I also acknowledge that in past eras, non-wm's often didn't have the access to an education which would allow them to produce worthy literature. In other words (not mine), I think an artist should be judged on the quality of his/her work, not the color of his/her skin (or whether he/she is a him or a her).

I was annoyed with teachers and colleagues who included unworthy artists/writers in their syllabi simply to even out the dwm percentage. That's why the oddly-defined feminist in me (my dad says I'm actually a post-feminist, but that's another blog), isn't bothered at the overpowering majority of dead male WASPs on the list. Historically they had the power, and the people with power are influential. I am a little surprised that the highest a woman reached was #30, but, ...

So, there's my argument with no one. Other perspectives?

*Romantic: the British literary period spanning the late 1700's-early 1800's, dominated by five poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Byron. Known for "waxing poetic" about such Romantic topics as idyllic nature and ideal qualities. Also known for overusing Capital Letters.