Smith, Ian. "Race in Hamlet: The violent Black man myth." www.throughlines.org/suite-content/race-in-hamlet-the-violent-black-man-myth. [Date accessed].

Race in Hamlet: The violent Black man myth

A dissection of the "violent Black man myth" and its early deployment in Hamlet.

Download the transcript
Ian Smith
University of Southern California

Race in the modern era has seen the circulation of the violent Black man stereotype that has been promoted through his criminalization in the “War on Drugs,” his overrepresentation in mass incarceration, and the deprivation of his life in extrajudicial shootings. Too often the recurrent theme and justification is that the Black man poses a threat, so criminalization, imprisonment, and death are offered as modern prevention strategies. How did we get here? Rather than try to tell a sociological story, we can examine one instance of this racial mythmaking in a widely studied, influential literary forebear: Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Further learning

Essay

Hamlet and the color of criminality

Bringing Hamlet into a recognizable universe of modern concerns and asking students to think about the demands reading Shakespeare and race places on them as 21st-century thinkers.

Ian Smith
Reading list

Reading the violent Black man myth in Hamlet

Suggested readings from Ian Smith for interrogating the role of race and the violent Black man myth in Hamlet.

Ian Smith

Recommended

Video

Titus Andronicus as the gateway drug

Students believe they know what Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet or Macbeth mean, but rarely do those “meanings” stem from the students’ close engagements with the texts. Using Titus Andronicus at the beginning of any Shakespeare class forces students to experience Shakespeare anew.

Ayanna Thompson
Video

Racial mixing in Titus Andronicus

Teaching Titus Andronicus can open up conversations about early modern English familiarity with race, racial difference, and mixed-race identity.

Kyle Grady
Activity

BIPOC lives in the English archives

This assignment asks students to investigate online databases in search of BIPOC who lived in England between 1500-1700.

Kim F. Hall