A Modern Reaction to Race and Racism in Shakespeare’s Othello

A Modern Reaction to Race and Racism in Shakespeare’s Othello

In the time period of this piece of literature, as we can clearly see from Othello and other works of Shakespeare, a topic of major discussion and debate is race. In today’s society this topic retains the same controversy and passion, the difference being however that these attitudes have taken a serious change over this past century. In this newly accepting society people of all races are existing in an increasingly international world that would be much more tolerant of race and disregard and take offense to any racial discrimination. So reading Othello as a member of today’s society, the reader would react to such racism in a somewhat different way than in the past. How should one interpret the messages Shakespeare is portraying to his audience, for example was Othello the moor portrayed as a tragic hero or did his character eventually come to resemble the prejudices of which he was a victim. But this issue of race is not limited to Othello, Shakespeare also discusses the issue of race the characters of Iago and Barbantio as well.

This issue of race is seen almost immediately in Act 1, Scene 1 through the actions of Barbantio. He objects the idea of his daughter ever marrying Roderigo since does not have the best reputation with him. Iago informs him that his daughter is seeing a moor and so Barbantio wishes Roderigo, "...O, Would you had had her!" By this Barbantio is saying that in his opinion even a disrespected Caucasian male is higher up than a respected noble and gentleman in the army whose only 'problem' as Barbantio sees it is that he is black. Through these words we are able to see Barbantio’s true feelings on this issue of race.

One of the other characters in the story who we can obviously see has an issue with race is Iago. Iago is represented as the wicked villain and also the most hateful racist. He seems to have only few reasons for his devious actions. Although he does suffer from the constant paranoia that his wife might be sleeping with someone else and the obvious hate he has for Othello being promoted instead of him, the one he seems to dislike the most about Othello is the color of his skin. We can see this when he uses strong racism in his speck to insult Othello by describing him as having "Thick lips," and also tells Barbantio that "Even now, now, very now an old black ram is tupping your white ewe...". By presenting the villain of the play to have such strong racism, Shakespeare is reproving those who attack people purely on the basis of the colour of their skin or their nationality. As modern audience we hence see that in Shakespeare is sending an anti-racist message.

The portrayal of Othello is very important in deciding how to react to the racism of Shakespeare since he is our protagonist. So this portrayal