One of the best books I read this year was Randall Robinson's The Debt America Owes to Blacks. It was the kind of shockingly delicious book you e-mail 10+ friends about. It had a controversial title, so I couldn't comfortably read it on the train; there were too many double takes and pursed lips. And I couldn't read it around my friends because they always wanted to begin debates I didn't have the energy to continue. So it became this guilty yet admittedly intellectual pleasure I indulged in during the time I allotted for Homework. I read it pencil in hand, ready to outline, underline and annotate each unapologetic word. For a few weeks, I considered Randall Robinson my God through what he wrote about had nothing to do with me and was rarely something I could even begin to agree with.
             One of the millennia of opinions he gave that made an impression on me was his analysis of Othello. He was discussing the origin of racism (only Randall Robinson can claim to know the origin of racism) and interestingly, he believed that the perception of black people's inferiority is a new phenomenon, nonexistent in the 15th Century. He argued that despite the prolific black/white metaphoric language, Othello's race was acknowledged only in terms of creating a difference between him and the Venetians, and in fact, the white Cassio was equally disdained for being a Florentine. I had read Othello as a High School sophomore (a time when I could neither understand nor enjoy Shakespeare) and I remembered the elaborate and redundant class discussions my teacher had awkwardly tried to initiate. Race and racism became the central focus of our study of Othello. Had this been a complete misinterpretation? Do we unconsciously modify works from the past to correlate with our own modern experience? Like almost every other topic in The Debt, I just didn't have enough knowledge to do anything but vaguely agree with him. Othello hadn't captured me enough for me to ...