Racism and Shaw

Abstract

abstract:For more than half a century, Shaw denounced racism and its counterpart, anti-Semitism, as well as the very idea of White supremacy, especially as they have been manifested in England and the British Empire (Egypt, India, South Africa, Australia, and Canada) as well as the United States and Nazi Germany. He related them to each other and to caste, social classes, and capitalism. This article surveys Shaw's dramatic and nondramatic works, including prefaces, interviews, articles, and his novella The Black Girl in Search of God, to provide an overview of Shaw's views on racism (including his solution to this social evil) and to argue that his perspectives remain relevant to twenty-first-century struggles against it.