The+Other+8

 "The Other"/ Racism         Racism:  n. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

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 * Please listen to this song: it will blow your mind. Forget the beat and everything else..listen to the lyrics and incredible story it tells...you will see true evil.....   **

 Web pages 

[|Read Michael Cooke's analysis of racism in Othello and learn what role Cooke believes racism plays in the story.]

[|Nicole Smith analyzes and gives in depths details on the use of racism in the play Othello.] <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> [|Find out how black you are- take the survey on the blackometer!] <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> or <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> [|A study guide that goes into detail on many of the aspects and views in Othello, including an entire section on racism.]

[|Definitely an interesting, Daileader goes through history comparing inter-racial couples. She also compares their authors which in this case focuses greatly on Shakespeare.]

[|Racism isn't the central issue of the play, it is only used when characters are angry or upset.]

Quotes

"That you fair daughter at this odd-even and dull watch o' the night, transported, with no worse nor better guard but with knave of common hire of Gondolier, to the gross clasps of a lascivious moor" (Pg 5 ln 136-140)

"Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe." (Act 1 Scene 1)

Music <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> media type="custom" key="2715601"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> News <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Articles

> **"I took high school Spanish, either he said he's not going to be caught, or please pick up my dry cleaning tomorrow."** > Tony Kornheiser is racist? Maybe but he apoligized for these remarks later that night. Check out this Yahoo article describing what happened.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">After [|Tony Kornheiser] listed to a Spanish Broadcast on Monday Night Football in honor of Spanish Heritage Month, Kornheiser said :
 * ENVIRONMENTAL [|RACISM]: TOXIC WASTE IS DISPROPORTIONALLY DUMPED ON COMMUNITIES OF [|COLOR]
 * [|Conversation on Race from the University of Michigan]
 * Is American too [|Racist] for Barack? Too sexist for Hillary?<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">
 * Do Mothers Pass On [|Racism] More than Fathers? Read this opinion column that shows statistics from recent research and make you own conclusion!

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Blog Posts

[|Blog about whether Obama's race will be a factor in the election]

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<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Videos Humorous YouTube Video created by high school students acting at Othello. Notice how they are indirectly racist. media type="youtube" key="zUpES3OJpBQ" height="344" width="425" This is a 20/20 special on racism in Ridgewood, NJ. ] media type="youtube" key="HIVgMvuCM_k" height="344" width="425"

Chris Rock talks about racism: media type="youtube" key="16k76bhc-co" height="344" width="425" media type="youtube" key="O4ytfuqpibY" height="344" width="425" Dave Chappelle media type="youtube" key="VU28Pv26nNQ" height="344" width="425"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Podcasts and Radio Programs

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Corresponding Criticism


 * "The full title of Shakespeare's tragedy, Othello, The Moor of Venice, draws attention to identity as a significant element in the play. The title identifies the main character not only in the most typical and obvious fashion--by naming him--but also by announcing two other distinguishing features: race and place. Both aspects are crucial to Othello's characterization and to the conflict that defines the plot. In fact, Othello is referred to as "the Moor" long before his name is even mentioned or he appears on stage. And Venice is his adopted home, the play's chief setting, although the action shifts to Cyprus after the first act. Who Othello is as "the Moor of Venice" becomes his tragedy of gain and ultimate loss."

Faith Nostbakken has written a 240 page novel analyzing Othello. She covers every aspect of the novel including its: characters, themes, symbols and motifs. In this excerpt, Nostbakken introduces the concept of race and the individual in Shakespeare's play. She points out that very rarely is Othello referred to by his name but rather by "the Moor", a major part in defining who he is. Her book continues to explain that during Shakespeare's time, a character like Othello was very risky which is why Othello is black.

Nostbakken, Faith. “Understanding Othello: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents .” Questia Online Library. 2000. Questia Media America. 13 Nov. 2008 <http://www.questia.com/‌read/‌24386477>.


 * "Issues of race and racism have long permeated American society and continue to be among the most important social concerns today. This novel explores how racial issues have been treated in a dozen major novels widely read by high school students and undergraduates " (Wilson)

Charles E. Wilson's novel on the existence of racist themes in major novels combats many critics who believe that plays like Othello should be banned in schools for their racist ideas. In his 2005 novel, WIlson discusses the use of racism in twelve different titles and explores other factors of the novel that make it controversial. For instance, his discussion of Huck Finn includes commentary on the civil war, and the relationship of the two main characters. Alhough there is no chapter dedicated to our "Othello," Wilson indirectly explains the racist theme found within by comparing works of other time periods that have this similar theme. Wilson, Charles. __Race and Racism in Literature__. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2005


 * "If there was a social disposition in 1604-5 to regard blacks and monsters as similar manifestations of the Other, as Strange News implies that there was, such a disposition would have affected both the generation and the reception of Othello at that historical moment....Whether some biographical Shakespeare actually considered such ideas "marketable" is not a question I can answer, but I will show that Othello's character is constructed in a way that would have engaged such popular associations of blacks with monsters and thereby would have intensified audience responses to early performances."

James Aubrey began his journal article by stating "Whoever believed in the Ethiopians before actually seeing them?" Aubrey brings up a very interesting point; the audience Shakespeare was directing "Othello" towards was unfamiliar and had never encountered black people before. The entire audience actually believed black people were monsters from Asia or Africa. In my mind, reading Aubrey's literature has changed my perspective of the play. Racism is defined as differences among the various human races that usually involve the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others. Othello is a target of racism because he is the only black person (clearly a minority at the time) and therefore white people believed they were superior to Othello. As I continue to analyze the play, I will keep in mind how uneducated the characters of "Othello" were and attempt to view as Othello as they did (I'm not being racist. I'm pretending to be uneducated). Another interesting part of Aubrey's article discussed Shakespeare's choice to make Othello black. Like Aubrey, I believe Shakespeare chose to do this to intrigue the audience and bring more emotion and passion into the performance. Aubrey, James R. "Race and the Spectacle of the Monstrous in 'Othello..'" __CLIO__ 22.3: 221. __Questia Online Library__. Questia Media America. 13 Nov. 2008 <http://www.questia.com/>.

In <span style="color: rgb(248, 245, 241);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Othello Shakespeare develops the ambiguous status of the dark-skinned African in Renaissance European society. As in The Merchant of Venice, religious issues complicate considerations of race and ethnicity, but Shakespeare's drama again leaves an attentive audience or reader with a powerful realization of the essential humanity of the racial "other." <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Othello is not, then, an expression of an established <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">racism ; rather, it highlights the danger of racial categorization at a point in European history when it was soon to become a problem. The danger is apparent in several disdainful references to <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Othello 's black skin, African features, and general foreignness; these are mingled with brutish sexual images after <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Othello, the hired commander of Venice's military forces, has secretly won the hand of a prominent senator's beautiful daughter. "What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe," exclaims Roderigo, a rejected suitor, "If he can carry't thus!" Iago rouses the father, Brabantio, by shouting under his window, "Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe," and soon adds, "I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs." When Brabantio first confronts <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Othello, he denies that his daughter without magical compulsion "Would ever have, t'incur a general mock, / Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom / Of such a thing as thou."

The magazine article, The Bard, the Black, and the Jew, discusses how Othello’s “black skin, African features, and general foreignness” separates him from the typical European man. The article says that Othello is not a form of direct racism, but an indication that it will become a problem in the near future in Europe. R.V. Young discusses the fact that although Othello’s racial difference causes animosity and tension, the fictionalized Venice is not considered to be a racist society. Barbantio welcomes Othello as a guest but not a son-in-law. This shows that although Barbantio is 100 percent against his daughter being married to Othello, he still has the respect to welcome Othello as a guest. Othello is a respected man; that is contributed to his bravery and honorary in the military. Othello is seen as the only hope to stop the Turkish invasion. The main point of this section of the article is to show that Othello may be “put down” or “handicapped” by the people because of his race, but he also is a much respected and highly regarded member of society. Rymer, an author who was prevalent in the 17th century, treated “black” people very different ly than Shakespeare did Othello. In his plays, African-Americans were not even given names and were seen as inferior persons. The time period in which he wrote symbolizes the unnecessary racism towards African-Americans. The view of racism in literature changed dramatically within 100 years. This article’s main purpose is to show that Othello may be different in society and is considered to be “the other” but that racism is not necessarily the focal point of the play, according to R.V. Young. Young, R.V. "The Bard, the Black, the Jew." __First Things: A Monthly Journal of__ __Religion and Public Life__ Mar. 2004: 22. __First Things: A Monthly Journal of__ __Religion and Public Life__. Ed. Gale Group. Vol. 141. Institute of Religion and Public Life, 2004. 22. This site discusses the use of race by Shakespeare in Othello's character. He is considered to be "the other" because he is African-American. However, R.V. Young describes how racism is not the focal point of the play [|www.questia.com]


 * As such scholars as Eldred Jones and Winthrop Jordan have taught us, there is ample evidence of the existence of color prejudice in the England of Shakespeare's day. This prejudice may be accounted for in a number of ways, including xenophobia--as one proverb first recorded in the early seventeenth century has it, "Three Moors to a Portuguese; three Portuguese to an Englishman"--as well as what V. G. Kiernan sees as a general tendency in the European encounter with Africa, namely, to see Africa as the barbarism against which European civilization defined itself:

Revived memories of antiquity, the Turkish advance, the new horizons opening beyond, all encouraged Europe to see itself afresh as civilization confronting barbarism. ... Colour, as well as culture, was coming to be a distinguishing feature of Europe (Orkin).


 * Furthermore, as Winthrop Jordan argues, the Protestant Reformation in England, with its emphasis upon personal piety and intense self-scrutiny and internalized control, facilitated the tendency evidenced in Englishmen to use people overseas as "social mirrors."5 Referring to the "dark mood of strain and control in Elizabethan culture," Jordan highlights too the Elizabethan concern with the need for "external self discipline" in a context of social ferment and change. "Literate Englishmen ... concerned with the apparent disintegration of social and moral controls at home" were on occasion inclined to project their own weaknesses onto outsiders, to discover attributes in others "which they found first, but could not speak of, in themselves" (Jordan, pp. 23-24). (Orkin)
 * These tendencies were coupled with a tradition of color prejudice that scholars identify in the literature and iconography of Shakespeare's day and earlier.6 As the //OED// indicates, the meaning of the word "black" includes, before the sixteenth century, a whole range of negative associations (Orkin)

In the time period of Othello, a moor would have been looked down upon by most Europeans and would have been poorly treated and disrespected. Europeans saw the increase of outsiders in their society as a degradation of their culture and didn't like them at all. Orkin discusses these feelings in his essay and talks about Othello's unusual status. "In his presentation of Othello as the antithesis of the stereotypical "Blackamoor," Shakespeare runs counter not merely to Cinthio's treatment of the Moor in //Hecatommithi,// but also to the currents of color prejudice prevalent in his age" (Orkin). Orkin suggests that Shakespeare put a moor in a position of authorty to show that he was against racism. Such a promotion in this time period would not have occurred and certainly would not be respected.

Orkin, Martin. "//Othello// and the 'Plain Face' of Racism." __Shakespeare Quarterly__. 38.2 (Summer 1987): 166-188. **Rpt. in** __Shakespearean Criticism__. Ed. Michelle Lee. Vol. 89. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 166-188. __Literature Resource Center__. Gale. Pascack Hills High School. 13 Nov. 2008 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=mont42806>.

Lesson Plan