Othello, etc. (was Re: Invention of the white race)

[Katha Pollitt]

I agree with Carroll about Othello. Desdemona's father is upset that he
is a Moor, but gets nowhere with the council.  Iago and Rodrigo mock his
dark skin, but  they're the villains.  In the social world Shakespeare
depicts, Othello is one of the most respected and effective men in
Venice. He's an outsider,  but  No one says he is stupid, lazy,
undeserving of command, disloyal, liable to rape or lacking in 
self-control, biologically subhuman etc. No one questions his authority.
It's true he kills his wife , but Shakespeare's plays are full of men
who are insanely jealous (Leontes) or who kill with not enough
forethought (Hamlet, Romeo). And after he kills Desdemona, the fury of
the envoy is turned not on Othello,  but on Iago, who set the whole
thing in motion. Shakespeare permits othello a noble suicide, while Iago
is taken off to be tortured. 

  It's also far from clear that othello is supposed to be a black
African, as opposed to an Arab ( he speaks scornfully of a turk as an
"uncircumsized dog," which would only be an insult if he were Muslim,
i.e. circumsized himself; also, his mother seems to be some sort of
Egyptian?). The Elizabethans knew perfectly well that the Arabs had a
great, if unchristian, civilization, with a material culture equal to
their own. Medieval and Renaissance romances, after all, are full of
noble paynims, love affairs between Christians and Muslims, etc. It
really doesn't seem to me much like the discourse of black and white in 
nineteenth century America.