The Importance Of Racism In The Middle Ages

Heraclitus said, “if there is one constant in life, it is change”, and upon reviewing the many aspects of change that the world we live in has gone through over the past 2000 years, nothing has changed more than society. During the mid-centuries people were a lot more conservative with all aspects of life from the way that they presented themselves to what they spoke about. The Middle Ages can be considered a time period in which people were very careful about what they spoke about and the way they were perceived, in order to prevent controversy. The social norms, values and morals of society were very different to what they are today, many issues such as racism and slavery were never spoken of as they were deemed “inappropriate conversation”.

Although racism was significantly evident during this time is was never spoken of in civilised conversation and rarely ever challenged in the 1600’s. Although, despite all the complications that racism provided, William Shakespeare did not waver in his confidence when it came to his writings about the subject of race and in creating controversy, he didn’t merely go against the norms of society in terms of writing about racism. We see in Shakespeare’s “Othello”, a black man becoming an army general or even having a high position in authority was unheard of, and what was even more obscure in terms of the play is that a black man was trusted by a white man and his word was taken over the word of another white man, which also contradicted society as black men were considered untrustworthy. Othello’s demise, which was centred on his jealousy and not his skin colour, can also be seen as an honourable death, admitting his wrong doings and stabbing himself to compensate, instead of having a white man, who would’ve been his superior, killing him instead. Although this play does contain racist language, it is only used by the protagonists of the play, and the audience ultimately ends