"Shakespeare's 'Othello' is inevitably and inescapably racist and could not be otherwise." (Emma Smith) Discuss the presentation of race in the play in light of this quote.

Over the last 400 years, literary critics and actors have argued over the racial origins of Shakespeare’s Othello. Many believe the play to be, as Emma Smith confirms, ‘inevitably and inescapably racist’, and therefore reinforce negative racial stereotypes. However, Othello can also be seen as a largely positive depiction of an interracial marriage, infected by the racist contextual world surrounding their relationship. Black characters in Elizabethan drama were typically villainous and people associated ‘blackness’ with moral corruption. There are even examples citing from Christian theology supporting the view that whiteness was a sign of purity and innocence, whilst black indicated sin. Therefore, Shakespeare’s presentation of a ‘Moor’ suggests that he wanted to highlight this concept of difference, but the ambiguous portrayal of race leaves the discriminative intent of the play up for debate.
It is clear that race is not a stable category. The meanings of blackness and whiteness change from culture to culture and with each generation. Therefore, whilst a modern audience may perceive the play as ‘inevitably and inescapably racist’, that was not neccesarily Shakespeare’s original intent. In fact, Shakespeare’s amicable portrayal of Othello may mark an underlying irony of him satirizing the Venetian opinion of the time, rather than a racist attempt at highlighting the disparities between black and white. In the 2015 RSC production of Othello,the character of Iago was played by an actor of African origin. Here it is clear that the dominating force of the story was not based around race, but Iago’s hatred of Othello stemmed from other stimuli, such as his suggested love for Desdemona, or his hatred of Cassio. It’s ‘racist’ nature can therefore be attributed to the criticism it has received which has provoked various conclusions, as suggested by Welles Unmoors when he stated that ‘If Othello did not begin as a play about race, then history has made it one’.