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.

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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.

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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

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