Race in Othello

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On the face of it, it's not entirely clear what it would mean to be a racist play. "Racist" is an adjective ordinarily applied to a person who believes that some race is inferior. Plays tell stories, rather than have beliefs. We can try to see if a play is intended, or likely, to induce those emotions in a person, and perhaps call that "a racist play".

The play certainly has racist characters. Iago makes a number of racist statements, and Brabantio responds to them. But it's important that both of these are antagonists, not protagonists. Iago is the chief villain of the play. Brabantio is thesenex iratus of the first act, the angry father-figure who must be overcome so that the lovers can be together.

Most of the other characters show great respect for Othello. The Venetian Senate makes him a general, and listens rapt to his war stories. Cassio is unswervingly loyal. Desdemona loves him (not wisely, but too well).

Othello himself is not always an admirable figure. He is a great general but he's also a jealous husband. Jealous husbands are common in Shakespeare. We don't think of Merry Wives of Windsor as despising white people because Ford is jealous of his wife. It's a character flaw in both, and it's a personal flaw, not a racial flaw. You'd need to start with a racist reading to say, "Othello does a bad thing, therefore all black people are bad."

Martin Orkin (1987) considers attitudes toward race in England in the late 1500s and early 1600s and focuses on the way that Shakespeare treated the subject of race in Othello. Orkin concludes that the playwright opposed racism and argues that Shakespeare was “working consciously against the color prejudice” that is voiced by some characters in the play. A similar point is made by R. V. Young (2004), who claims that Othello “highlights the danger of racial categorization” by presenting a nonwhite protagonist
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