In American society the African American male has always been viewed as someone who is below the rest of the individuals in the country. He has been oppressed since coming to this country, which he was forced to come to so he could be a scapegoat for all of the white man’s problems. The white man, who needed to feel superior over someone, pegged black man as being dangerous animalistic creatures: telling other men of superiority that they were after their wives and their nice things when in reality all the black man wanted was to be treated like a human being and not animals.
This is something that the black man still has to ask for today because with the centuries of negativity surrounding their skin color and the way the media depicts them now they are seen as nothing more than aggressive and misunderstood, which individuals either take pity upon or look down on them in disgust. Neither is a proper way to live. In today’s American society and American societies of the past nothing more has been expected of the black man but to be angry, confused, frightened, and violent in his actions towards others, but especially women.
Literature throughout history has illustrated this false social expectation in plays like Shakespeare’s Othello and novels such as Richard Wright’s Native Son, which has allowed this stereotype on black men to grow throughout the ages. The issue of stereotyping black men begins with the way they were brought to America. They were all forced against their will to come to a place to be forced to work in terrible conditions and hardly be able to keep themselves alive. They were seen as animals, equivalent to the oxen a farmer used to plow his field.
Many of us do not know that feeling so we do not how we would react, but you could only imagine the humiliation one would feel about him or herself. While black women were seen as being ignorant and dumb at the least, black men were plagued with being absolutely greedy monsters that were automatically violent with no provocation. That was nothing but an absolute lie. These men were forced out of their homes, separated from their women and children, and were sold off to work for the white man. There is hardly anything worse in American history than slavery.
It is an issue that still plagues American society today. How could we ever expect the black man to be seen or understood on the same level as the white man when they started nowhere near each other on the playing field and whenever you seen a black man in power you are trained to question his authority? These stereotypes lay in many pieces of literature from throughout history. Shakespeare’s Othello was written in 1603, which told a story of a Moor, a black king, who was a well-noted soldier yet his intentions and his authority were both greatly questioned.
Andrew Carlson wrote “In the nineteenth century, Othello presented a challenge to a Shakespeare-adoring white public. While the dominant society understood African Americans to be a biologically and culturally inferior race, Shakespeare’s play offered a noble black man engaged in a sexual relationship with a white woman. Despite this challenge, Othello enjoyed great popularity during the mid-to late century” (Carlson 176). Othello, the Moor, had come back from war and chosen a wife, Desdemona, whose skin was as fair as snow.
There were immediately individuals out to get him because of his choice the most active and focused upon being lago. He begins by taking Roderigo under his wing and having him tell on Desdemona and her choosing a black man as her husband to her father Brabantio. He immediately makes it sound as though Desdemona is being held against her will by Othello. Roderigo says to Brabantio “that [his] fair daughter, / At this odd-even and dull watch o’ the night, / Transported, with no worse nor better uard/ But with a knave of common hire, a gondolier, / To the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor” (1. 1). Brabantio’s reaction sparks fire and he goes to fight for his daughter believing there is no way she could have chosen the Moor as her husband and is surprised to find she is with him not against her will, but because she claims to love him. The relationship between Desdemona and Othello indefinitely ends Desdemona’s relationship with her father because he does not approve of her choosing a black man.
The disgust he immediately feels for Othello because of the color of his skin is strike one against the black man. Throughout the play the use of the women and how they work around the men is very dependent on what the man needs. The workings of lago to make Othello believe Desdemona is cheating on him with Cassio is not a one man show. Whether or not they knew it, the characters of Shakespeare’s Othello were all being used by lago to form as weapons against one another, all to make the black man feel inferior to the white men as punishment for “taking” one of their women.
Iago’s wife, Desdemona’s servant of sorts, is formed by lago has the ultimate final weapon against Othello and Desdemona’s relationship. Emilia takes from Desdemona the first gift Othello has ever given to her, a silk handkerchief with strawberries embroidered upon it, and gives it to lago to give it to Cassio for it to appear that Desdemona herself has given the handkerchief to him. In the midst of being the first domino to fall in this plan Emilia, she is simply just happy to please her husband.
She says, “I am glad I have found this napkin:/ This was her first remembrance from the Moor:/ My wayward husband hath a hundred times/Woo’d me to steal it; but she so loves the token,/ For he conjured her she should ever keep it,/ That she reserves it evermore about her/ To kiss and talk to. I’ll have the work ta’en out,/ And give’t lago: what he will do with it/ Heaven knows, not 1;71 nothing but to please his fantasy” (3. 3). Emilia did not know it at the time, but she was a primary step in her own demise.
The women in the play are simply there to please their men and when they do they are treated like the queens they are, but when their men are displeased anything could happen. As Othello is constantly being told his wife is unfaithful he begins to believe the notion that his wife is cheating and begins to become angry with her. He makes a comment towards the end of the play which illustrates the feelings he is developing for Desdemona and the actions he believes she is performing. He says, “Damn her, lewd minx!
O, damn her! / Come, go with me apart; I will withdraw,/ To furnish me with some swift means of death/ For the fair devil” (3. 3). Othello wanted to take Desdemona’s life for all of the turmoil she was causing him when in reality he was just being alienated with his feelings and feeling forced to deal with them alone. Being a black man Othello knew how all of his white counterparts looked at him and he felt he had no choice but to show absolutely no weakness and deal with his issues on his own.
Alpaslan Toker begins his article “Othello: Alien in Venice” with the sentence, “Alienation is one of the most widely-confronted phenomena not only in philosophy, psychology, sociology and politics, but also in literature of various genres” (29). And later connects Othello by saying, “Othello, the title character in one of William Shakespeare’s most well-known tragedies bearing the same name, stands alone despite his military prowess and services he had done to a civilized city reputed for its democracy and tolerance towards outsiders.
Throughout the play, readers as well as audiences find Othello desperately striving to accommodate himself into the perfect Venetian of higher birth, to embrace the Venetian concepts of race, gender, religion, matrimony, sexuality and power and to break away from the typical characteristics of a stereotyped ‘Moor” (Toker 29). The alienation Othello feels leads to his insecurity and ultimately his murdering of Desdemona. Before Othello murders Desdemona he questions her on the accusations he has heard of yet he hears none of her reply because he is so set on what he has heard her be accused of.
Othello’s insecurity in his place of power caused his mind to be manipulated by lago and the rest of his white counterparts. Othello just like black men today faced discrimination being in the place he was in and the position he had. Although he appeared to be in power he faced the discrimination of alienation because he was different than those around him. Ruth Vanita wrote in an article about the “unprotectedness” of the wives in Othello. She wrote “Several recent critics have sought to explain Othello’s behavior as arising from his insecurity as a black in a racist white society.
However, I would contend that the play forcefully combats racism (which posits blacks and whites as essentially different) precisely by its presentation of Othello as not at all different from any white husband” (Vanita 341). The reality of the situation is that as a society we view Othello being at fault because he is black, but would a white man really react any different. Yes, the surroundings and difficulties Othello faced because of the color of his skin were prevalent, but did that ultimately make his decision. That is what we have been trained to see as a dominant white society.
