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was it to show how poeple were racist in elizebethan era?

and/or

to create entertainment?

cheers

As a tragedy, Othello had to be in a heightened position at the beginning of the play. Although to be too narrowly concerned with the Aristotelian definition will limit the play's emotional effects.

Shakespeare's use of a general revealed many themes which are almost too numerous to mention here.  But the fact that he made him a Moor also highlighted many other subjects such as race, and being an outsider, that Shakespeare felt were important for audiences to see. The play has so much to offer and there is something in it for everyone.  Othello is one of his most critically acclaimed plays, and is a staple of most AP and IB classrooms.

It may very well have been to bring to light the racism of the time.  Shakespeare has been known (as are other authors--Chaucer, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Edith Wharton, to name a few) to put it all out there and place the mirror before society's face and make them look full-on into their own faults.  He often addressed the way women were treated in his time period--why do you think so many of them dressed up like men and went out into the world to do the things they did?  Because they couldn't do them as women!  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.