What are some of the racist insults to Othello in the play?

Answer 1

No. It's difficult to see how a story of passion and politics, love and betrayal can have a racial connotation. Do you ask this question because the main character is black? It's necessary to understand that in Shakespeare's time racial divisions were not as we see them today. Another answer: I would hold that the play is oddly both racist and accepting of racial differences. It does contain some of what I would call racist remarks, such as when Iago tells Brabantio that "even now, very now, an old black ram [Othello] is topping your white ewe [Desdemona]." Such passages would seem to refute critics who say that the play treats Othello's race as ambiguous, i.e., perhaps only swarthy as a Moorish North African -- ethnically Arab or Berber -- might be expected to look. It seems to me more likely that Shakespeare and his audience were prone to confuse Africans' physical features and races and treat "Moor" as synonymous with black Africans, as reflected in the term "blackamoor." On the other hand, I think there may be some attestation for their use of "black" to mean simply anyone who wasn't blond. Even so, aside from a general tendency by other characters to treat Othello as "other," referring to him usually simply as "the Moor," he is accepted as an equal, even respected for his military rank. So much so that apart from Iago's ribald jesting, no one seems to think his being married to Desdemona in any way remarkable. So it seems to me that Elizabethans, for all their racial and class distinctions, hadn't yet come to abhor miscegenation. I suspect this is because segregation in its full force became ingrained in the Western mind only as a symptom and enablement of the swelling tide of enslavement of Africans after the time Othello was written around 1600.

Answer 2

Race plays some part in Othello, but not, perhaps, as much as you think. Desdemona's father does not have a problem with her marrying Othello. Nor is Iago's jealousy based on color, but rather that Othello is favored over him. Where race does seem to come into play, although perhaps it is just part of Othello's being a warrior/general, is when he murders Desdemona rather than letting her explain how Iago came to have her handkerchief.

Answer 3

Some people, notoriously Brabantio, Desdemona's father, are uncomfortable with the idea of a man of African background being romantically involved with a woman of European background. Iago plays this aspect of their relationship up to get Brabantio angry. But that is not true of the majority of the people in the play, who have no problem with the marriage between Othello and Desdemona. The play was not written in a time of rampant racism; darker skin was considered uglier than paler skin, but that was a value which cut across races. Othello's colour was only one of many characteristics which made him very different from Desdemona, including age, experience, culture, and social status.

It is in the criticism of later years, particularly in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth, when racism, especially in the United States but also in Britain, was a deeply entrenched social value, audiences were profoundly disturbed by the mixed marriage presented on stage, and therefore focussed on that aspect of the play. The reaction (which has resulted in the part of Othello being unavailable to white actors and Desdemona unavailable to black actresses) is still as unnaturally focussed on race as before. In this sense racism is not a large part of the play, but has had and continues to have a significant effect on its production.

Answer 4

Thick-Lips