Smith, Ian. “We Are Othello:
Speaking of Race in Early Modern Studies.” Shakespeare
Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 1, 2016, pp. 104-124. Project MUSE, doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/shq.2016.0000.
Ian Smith considers the implications
that race relations in Othello can
have on contemporary racial conflicts in the U.S., such as police brutality and
the Black Lives Matter movement. Ultimately, he uses the racial conflicts
present in Othello to argue that
predominantly white culture, specifically scholars, need to do the internal
work necessary in order to 1) fully understand the perspective and unique
experience of a person of color and 2) discuss race without a biased lens of
white privilege. Smith begins by questioning the reliability of white scholars
in accurately representing Othello in their analyses, considering that Othello
is a black man and literary scholars are predominately white. Smith says that
with primarily white critics, Othello might not get the credit he deserves
because white audiences/readers/critics are “unreliable narrators” of Othello’s
story (113). Smith then explores how white privilege in the U.S. is mirrored in
Othello, pointing toward Othello
needing to answer for his skin color when questioned on Desdemona’s love for
him, and toward Othello needing to ask his comrades to “speak of” him at the
end of the play. Othello must trust that his comrades will accurately reflect
his story without their own biases. This is where Smith considers the notion of
white privilege in the U.S. and challenges readers and scholars to do the work
necessary to develop a reliable representation of Othello’s experience--and of
the experience of people of color in general. While it is easy for people who
are white to ignore race because they are not confronted with their race on a
daily basis, doing so perpetuates white privilege. In order to “speak of”
Othello (and by extension, people of color) reliably, we must do the work that
allows us to fully understand Othello’s experience; we must align with the
sentiment expressed in the article’s title: “We Are Othello.”
Jenny Jadin
