Othello's Ethnicity

Was Othello of African or Arabic descent?

In the famous play Othello by William Shakespeare the topic of Othello’s ethnicity is a very widely discussed topic. Most people get to the, in my opinion, erroneous conclusion that Othello was of sub-Sahara African descent (black). The opposing point of view’s position is that he was of Arabic, or North African descent, which as I will attempt to explain throughout this paper is, in my opinion, correct.

The main points people who believe that he was black use is that quite simply throughout the play he is called black a number of times, and he is also called thick lipped once, and moors don’t have thick lips. He mentions he was a slave, and at the people who were slaves were the West Africans not the Arabs.

A little before Shakespeare’s time queen Elisabeth had started to make the distinction between the fair Europeans and the “blackmoors” which was supposed to be a way to classify the people from North Africa but it was really just a way to classify anyone from anywhere in Africa. She started trading these “blackmoors” as slaves. And we know for sure that at least one of these shipments of “blackmoors” was composed completely of people from West Africa, in fact they were Spanish slaves stolen by England. So the term black started being used for the “blackmoors” as well as the West Africans (because of their skin color). All this went on while England traded goods and interacted with the Moroccans or North Africans (Bartels, pg 148-150). So even though the moors obviously had a better standing in Europe than the West Africans they still could have been captured and sold as slaves. So Othello could perfectly have been a slave at some point in his life. And it only makes sense that he would be able to walk away after running away if he was a moor, because a black person would not be able to walk free, only a moor would. Moors were able to walk free in Europe and this is why Queen Elisabeth felt she needed to put this barrier of color between Europeans and the rest of the darker world. (Bartels 148-150). The last problem that I already presented was that Othello was called thick lipped, and North Africans don’t have thick lips. And this too is part of the people’s ignorance; the term “black” is just a way to differentiate those who are not European (Neill, pg 368). Proof of this ignorance is that people actually believed the wild stories about Africa to be true. Stories like some involving people whose heads grew under their shoulders and others like that (Neill, pg 362). This ignorance was not in the least the people’s fault, the only ways they had of knowing what was outside of their city is to hear the stories of the people who came from outside the city. These were the stories they brought, but if they were confused about people with heads growing under their shoulders they certainly did not know the difference between a moor and a thick lipped black from West Africa. And as we can see from the stories of people with no heads which Othello tells Desdemona about, we can see that Shakespeare knows of the people’s ignorance and uses it to get their interest. Therefore “thick lipped” is just another one of the many things Shakespeare uses to catch the audiences attention without much regard for it actually being accurate since people were very ignorant and they did not know about it anyway.

To support this we might also say that the only ones who call Othello black are the ones that are trying to put him down and himself at the end when he is feeling worse every second about himself. Blackness in Othello in general represents evil and bad things in general. At that time black people were also considered less; to tell someone that he is black is to degrade him. When Othello is called thick lipped it is just a very well known feature that people from West Africa have, and to call him that is the same as calling him black just stronger, and with more weight, because it is like you just noticed that he has thick lips, and you are just saying it (whether it was said in a degrading manner or not) and we know that only West African people have lips like that, as opposed to the skin color which could be very easily confused for some other shade of a darker skin. So by not referring directly to his skin color Iago is able to insult Othello about his blackness in a much greater level than he would have been able to had he simply referred to him as black.

Some people who believe that he was black think that those who say that he was a moor believe so since he is called a moor and a Turk throughout the play, and actually those two names were used throughout all of Africa and part of India at different times going back and forth. These people therefore think that this is enough proof for the fact that a moor or a Turk isn’t necessarily an Arab or North African. The problem with that logic is that at that same time when the names were going back and forth throughout Africa and India is the same time when the Ottoman Empire was again gaining and losing power and conquering and retreating from other countries. And that was why people from different places stared being called moors and Turks, because they were moors and Turks or at least they were governed by them (Neill, pg 364-365)

Some may try to claim that Othello being called a moor is purely symbolism, just like the Jew in The Jew of Malta; it is used for symbolism, as some sort of sarcastic humor. Since the Jew in that play is representative of a scattered nation he cannot actually be from Malta. So too saying that he is the Moor of Venice is just for the same sort of sarcastic humor. If he is a moor he cannot be from Venice. He may like the Jew in the Jew of Malta he lives in Malta, but that is only temporary, he is not so much of Malta as he is in Malta, just like his fellow Jews in Portugal, Italy, Bairseth, and France. They are all just in those places they are not actually “of” any of those places; they are all on the run. It is the same here in Othello, a moor cannot be “of” Venice he may reside there but he is not from there. So the subtitle The Moor of Venice is actually just for some sarcastic humor. And therefore all the references to him being a moor are just part of this humor and they aren’t actually referring to his race or to actually describe him, as he is described as black throughout the rest of the play (Neill pg 363). There are a couple of problems with this theory. The first is that we have already established that it was when he was being called black that it wasn’t specifying