Queen's students forced to apologize for casting Othello as a white woman still don't get it

Campus Notes — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 18:39:24 +0000

As a mixed-race woman of Black heritage, I have always connected deeply to Shakespeare's Othello. For people of colour growing up in a predominantly white nation with a deeply Eurocentric curriculum, non-white characters like Othello are significant because they affirm our existence in literature, and help us articulate our struggles with internalized racism and white supremacy.

There are so few instances in Western literature where Black characters are permitted to exist, let alone to exist as multifaceted, sympathetic, and central. Othello is one of the rare texts in the English literary canon to make a Black character its protagonist and to focus on issues of anti-Black racism.

Evelyna Ekoko-Kay

Queen's students forced to apologize for casting Othello as a white woman still don't get it