The issue your teacher/professor is probably trying to get you to think about is not whether Aristotle was black, but rather how did Aristotle's views impact race relations in the US, specifically Aristotle's views on Natural Slavery.

Aristotle was born in a city called Stagira in 384 B.C. Stagira was located on the Chalkidiki Peninsula in northern Greece. It is highly unlikely, therefore, that Aristotle was "black" (Subsaharan African, I am taking this to mean). Contemporary busts of him survive, at least in the form of Roman copies of Greek originals (here is a photo of one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aristoteles_Louvre.jpg), and he does not have Subsaharan African features, etc., but rather European features, and given this evidence and the time in which he lived and the vast distance between Subsaharan Africa and northern Greece it is safe to say he was European.

Aristotle offers, in Book One of his work "Politics", a perspective on the ideal political unit… without getting into too much detail here, as a part of this discussion he writes of masters and slaves, and of the difference between those who are slaves by law and those who are slaves by nature. This is pretty heavy stuff… I took an entire class focusing on Aristotle's works, got a B in it, and failed to grasp a fair amount of it... but what he is trying to do is break down different relationships between power groups within a political unit (he views the polis, the city, as the highest unit, followed by relationships on a smaller level, including master-slave). He discusses rather people can only be slaves by law, or if some people are slaves by nature... and his conclusion is that for anyone to be a natural slave is contrary to human behavior… now, you can interpret this various ways…. are the kind of people who would be natural slaves subhuman, or are there no humans who are natural slaves and all slaves are slaves because of laws making them so?

So, how does the above fit into a project for a black history course? Well, I would suggest you look at how Aristotle's philosophy impacted philosophers writing in the era of European enslavement of black Africans, and in what ways his works were co-opted or used to justify the enslavement of Subsaharan African peoples. Aristotle had huge, long-lasting influence on European thinkers. He wrote philosophy, which is by nature open to interpretation… and people did so after his death, for thousands of years, and are still doing so.

Another thing worth noting (and for you to research) is that classical Greek concepts of slavery were quite different from concepts of slavery in, for instance, the Antebellum South. I won't go into too much detail, but take a look at how the slavery Aristotle was familiar with differs from the slavery that impacted black people in the Americas. Then look at how his writings might have been used in the era of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and American slavery to justify the actions of people keeping black people as slaves.

You might want to start with Aristotle's 'Politics', Book I, which is available for free via Project Guttenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6762/6762-h/6762-h.htm). There is a huge, and I mean huge, amount of secondary literature available on Aristotle… where to start? Maybe just do an internet search for books on Aristotle and slavery, I'm sure this has been widely written about before.

I hope this helps, Cheers!

From the ethical slant, you can look at how Aristotle's doctrine of the mean influenced MLK. Consult the [ Nicomachean Ethics] (http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.2.ii.html) book II sections 6&7 for Aristotle's explaination, and MLK's [Letter froma Birmingham Jail] (http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html) for his struggle with the theory. In short, the theory is that all virtue is a mean between two extremes: e.g., wit is a mean between boorishness and buffoonery. King applied the theory to the state of the Black community.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

Later in the Letter, he revises his stance, discarding the theory. Even if it's not what your prof had in mind, it's worth a read for the reasoning and the rhetoric.