From: egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges)
Subject: Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court
Originator: news@ernie.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 13:19:36 GMT

Transposed?  You can meaningfully transpose two characters.  But in the
context, "Iago" was not transposed with anything.  Admit it.  You
mistakenly said "Iago" because you weren't thinking.  Since you entered
this thread on the wings of a flame about my "literacy", your error is
especially laughable.  Next time, engage brain before posting.

>
>>You missed
>>Posner's racism completely because you cannot admit to racism.
>
>Your own racism is apparent in your assumption that I am white.

Your "race" or skin color is not relevant.  Black men can be racists,
and I DON'T mean "reverse racists."  Clarence Thomas, for example, is a
nonreverse racist of the first water in that he has chosen to be a
lackey of a racist administration. 

>
>Not really. Anyone who's studied cognitive psychology knows that such
>transpositions are common in speech and writing. In any case, I've
>actually performed in the play, and I have no doubts about who's whom.

I'm relieved to hear it.  However, actors of Shakespeare are not
especially good critics.  Also, I said that your subconscious is at war
with your conscious.  You "know" that Posner meant Othello, you
unconsciously substituted Iago because you also know that you, and
Posner, are both fools when you describe the Othello of Act 1 as a
monstrous black miscegenator.

>
>>However, Shakespeare lived
>>precisely before the 17th century growth in European hegemony and most
>>people 1580-1610 retain mediaeval attitudes towards other peoples, which
>>were not racist in the modern sense.
>
>Sorry, but you're wrong here. Sometimes I wonder if you're just making
>this up as you go along. It is well-established that Elizabethan culture
>condemned and rejected non-Christians and non-whites. The use of "black"
>is an epithet throughout Shakespeare--even in the sonnets, as when
>Shakespeare says:
>
>"For I have sworn thee fair, have thought thee bright,
> Who art as black as hell, as dark as night."
>
>Only someone more or less ignorant of Shakespeare could suppose that his
>audience did not suffer from racial prejudice--see, e.g., any use of the
>word "Ethiop" or "Ethiope." The Moor himself alludes to those who dislike
>him because of the color of the skin. Or did you miss this in the play?
>
Any?  How about (Romeo and Juliet)


     "...it seems that she hangs on the cheek of night
     As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear."


This notices the skin color but in a neutral or even flattering sense
(in that Shakespeare is complimenting the Ethiop on his dress.)  And in
your example, no scholar believes that the Dark Lady of the Sonnets was
black, sinply that she was of a dark complexion.

Racism is about power, not "noticing skin color".  In Othello, the protagonist
attracts resentment not because of his skin color per se.  He attracts
resentment because of his abilities, which are superior, and because of
sexual jealousy on the part of Cassio.  In mediaeval times, which
influenced Shakespeare greatly, "Ethiops" were coreligionists (Ethiopia
was in fact a Christian country) and as such complete equals.  Racism
was a seventeenth and eighteenth century invention in which an elite in
Europe lorded it over nonwhite peoples and dispossessed peoples at
home.

Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus is a savage, but his savagery is
equalled and bettered by the savagery of the "white" (eg., Roman)
characters in that early and bloodthirsty play.  There are (as Terence
Hawkes et al. have pointed-out) elements of modern-day racism in the
Tempest (the racist Paul Johnson uses the title "Caliban's Kingdoms" in
the chapter on the third world in his Modern Times.)  Scholars have
shown, however, that these elements resulted from early seventeenth
century voyages rather than from any long-standing mediaeval racism per
se.  My belief is that England's lower classes were encouraged to be
more and more racist as the seventeenth century wore on as a way of
hiding their dispossession by the landed gentry, a process which still
continues.              

>