Wuthering Whites

There's a bluster about re: a new version of Wuthering Heights featuring a Heathclif who is, gasp!!!...black!!!!

 In most descriptions of “Wuthering Heights,” Heathcliff (that’s his one and only name) is described as a dark-skinned Gypsy or Roma child, who is found wandering the streets of Liverpool and taken in as a foster child by the sternly religious Mr. Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights (Paul Hilton in the film). But his actual origins are never made clear, and one neighbor even speculates that he might be “a little Lascar or American castaway.” In other words, nobody has the slightest idea who he really is or where he came from, but to use obnoxious contemporary language, he’s clearly a racial “other.” So suggesting that he might be an abandoned or runaway slave from Africa or the United States or the West Indies, as Arnold does, is entirely consistent with Brontë.

I, for one, am very comfortable with the idea of a black man named Heathcliff. Just saying.