does race matter in Othello?

yes bc it makes ppl sit up and take notice

no bc it makes it seem as it is 'the race play' (this is in part true) when there is so much more.

Iago is not driven racially, he is much deeper and much more emotional than that.

Othello is one of the few black men in venice who is not a servant. Othello is his own man and does not try to fit in: he is settled in his indentity. His relationship with desdemona is what settles him so when that is taken away from him he looses his sense of belonging and worth.

IQBAL KHAN 2015 PRODUCTION ^^

Othello may be connected with the Moors who remained in Spain after the fall of Granada in 1492 until a later expulsion in 1609,  [1]or with the people of ‘Barbary’ in North Africa

The term ‘Moor’ could also indicate a nonwhite person who was not necessarily a Spanish or North African Muslim; black Africans could be referred to as ‘blackamoors’. Yet when Queen Elizabeth desired the removal of ‘negars and blackamoors’ from Britain in 1601, she seemed to be referring to Moorish refugees from Spain.

Venice, the backdrop for  Othello, is an Italian city, and  Shakespeare's English contemporaries had mixed views of  Italy as a nation that was in many ways different from their own. It was, for example, Catholic rather than Protestant, but like  England it was still part of Christianized  Western Europe as opposed to non-Christian states and empires in the Far East. Venice, in particular, was seen as a key protector of Christianity from Eastern threats of Islam, as well as a central contact point, geographically, for trade and international relations from the west to the east and the south. This is of particular importance when one considers…