"American history is a cornucopia of racial tension," Michael Quieto opens his essay, Othello as Forum for the Condemnation of Racial Prejudice. Mentioning the slave trade, the Ku Klux Klan, Reconstruction, and Martin Luther King, he sets his tone. Literature has always been a medium used for social criticism; Quieto uses the example of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain for the subject of racism as comparison. His opinion is that, "racial prejudice must have been just as prevalent in the sixteenth century England of Shakespeare as in modern day America. Thus, Othello can be seen as a condemnation of racial prejudice."

An array of examples showing the use of racial stereotypes is presented by Queito to illustrate this "condemnation."--

Iago uses these stereotypes to injure Othello's character when in conversation with others:

1. to Brabantio, "an old black ram/is tupping your white...