Milo Kramer
Appearances
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
Because I thought I was helping children. And I only gradually came to understand that I was really just a fucked up cog in a larger fucked up system.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
Jason's 16, and he proudly identifies as libertarian. He's a 16-year-old libertarian. I'm kind of afraid of him.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
I want to tell her not to. I want to tell her not to. You cannot study theater. You have to study math. You're good at math. You're failing math. You want to study theater? Theater doesn't matter.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
Faith says, I think I'm stupid. I can't read. I guess I'm stupid. I get Bs. I must be stupid. I say, I don't think you're stupid. Faith repeats, I'm sure I'm stupid. If you think I'm smart, please prove it. I tell her intelligence is unmeasurable and different in every individual. Faith just looks at me and says, no. I say, yes. She says, no. She says, no, no, no, no.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
Divya has to respond to the question, is Shakespeare's oath a low racist? In a five-paragraph essay for her white teacher by Monday. And she says, just tell me the answer, please. I have so much homework this week. I need to get this done as fast as possible. Is Othello racist? Yes or no? I'm like, have you read the play? She's like, yes, and I watched the Laurence Fishburne movie.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
I'm like, great, so what do you think? She's like, I don't know. I'm 15. I'm afraid to say the wrong thing. I'm like, same. This stuff is hard to talk about, but you've got to trust yourself, even though you've also got to constantly question and interrogate yourself. Either way, you've got to try. You've got to try. You've got to try, try, try, try, try. I'm desperate to do a good job.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
Divya's Indian American mom can hear us in the next room. I do not know what to do. Divya looks at the assignment rubric to see how she'll be graded. She needs a clear defensible thesis followed by three unique body paragraphs. I can tell she's overwhelmed. I say, remember, grades don't matter, Divya. Learning can't be measured. Just trust how you feel you did.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
She says, maybe grades don't matter if you're rich. But in my family, grades are so important. I think I thought at first that Divya didn't have the words to talk about the play in any nuanced way. But now I start to think that her understanding is deeper than my own. And she might never talk to me about Othello honestly and shouldn't have to.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
Finally, I decide she just wants me to provide her with some easy answer to satisfy her teacher and get her through the semester unscathed. So I'm like, okay. Your teacher is either looking for an essay that's like, Yes, Othello is very racist. The story of the play is there's this super professionally and romantically successful black man all of these white guys are jealous of and cannot handle.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
That tension is resolved when the white guys trick Othello into murdering his wife, thereby turning him into the brutish stereotype they wanted him to be all along. That the title role was performed in blackface for centuries underscores this. Moreover, that's a good, that's kind of a transition word, Divya. Moreover, I mean, my next body paragraph will be about.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
Moreover, Desdemona's whiteness, in contrast, is repeatedly presented as innately good, innocent, and desirable. That's one essay you could write that would get an A. The other essay you could write that would also get an A goes, no, Othello is not super racist. Othello is a flawed attempt at anti-racism. In that, it's Shakespeare's only play to center a dynamic black protagonist.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
The play was banned in apartheid South Africa for depicting an interracial relationship. Moreover, The play's most prejudiced characters are always presented as either stupid, Rodrigo, or evil, Iago. It would be a mistake to conflate the perspectives of these characters with the meanings of the work as a whole.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
Either of those essays would get As, Divya, but what your teacher's reductive yes or no prompt does not allow for is an essay that's like what I think I think. which is something like, Othello is a product and reflection of another culture, Elizabethan England, 400 years old, written at a time when race was just being invented as a system of power.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
The play later became a cultural export of the British Empire, which colonized black and brown people around the world. The play remains a best seller of the Shakespeare industrial complex. In other words, Divya, Othello and racism are so indelibly linked. that the question, is Othello racist, seems to confuse both what racism is and what artworks are.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
In my opinion, what's really racist, Divya, is that we are required to read Othello for the billionth time, that it's on the curriculum at your Brooklyn public high school, even though the play is boring, when we could be reading any number of contemporary black playwrights. Divya responds, don't hate me, but I kinda liked reading Othello.
This American Life
823: The Question Trap
The story is really crazy and the language is really pretty.