Shakespeare’s Plays Not about Whiteness

Shakespeare has long been dismissed, with others in the Western canon, as a dead white male. Now, there’s another, worse charge against the Bard — he created the concept of whiteness.

Yes, instead of standing in the line of such literary giants as Dante, Chaucer, and Goethe, Shakespeare is to be associated from now on with the likes of the 19th-century French apostle of scientific racism Arthur de Gobineau, George Wallace, and — why not — the Oath Keepers.

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Rich Lowry

Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.

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William Shakespeare

Shakespeare has long been dismissed, with others in the Western canon, as a dead white male. Now, there’s another, worse charge against the Bard — he created the concept of whiteness.

Yes, instead of standing in the line of such literary giants as Dante, Chaucer, and Goethe, Shakespeare is to be associated from now on with the likes of the 19th-century French apostle of scientific racism Arthur de Gobineau, George Wallace, and — why not — the Oath Keepers.