race

• Sanders - Othello’s blackness is “factually, physically, visually, poetically, psychologically, symbolically, morally and religiously”
• Dadabhoy - “The play is simultaneously a fantasy of inclusion and a tragedy of exclusion”
• Hunter - “The sexual fear and disgust that lie behind so much racial prejudice are exposed for our derisive expectations to fasten upon them. And we are at this point bound to agree with these valuations, as no alternative view is revealed”
• Wain - "Racial difference from the other characters is not that it makes him terrifying or disgusting - it manifestly doesn't, except to people with a grudge against him already - but that it is the outward symbol of his isolation"
• Loomba (also context) - Both blacks and Muslims were regarded as given to unnatural sexual and domestic practices, as highly emotional and even irrational, and prone to anger and jealousy”
• Turner - Shakespeare questions Othello’s racial stereotype, but does not reject it, which makes the play problematic.