Douglas Merchant

This break I was fortunate enough to see The Merchant of Venice on Broadway. Being a philistine of sorts (or maybe just lazy) I didn’t actually read the play before seeing it. So correct me if you feel my assumptions on the play are inaccurate. However, while reading the biography of Fredrik Douglass I couldn’t help but notice similarities between the treatment of Shylock, and the other Jews, and slaves in America. The role that both tradition and religion played in the persecution of Shylock and slaves is strikingly similar. In both cases the source of the persecution is cultural—it has become a tradition of sorts to maltreat the Jews and the blacks.

In Douglass the white aristocracy is born into the southern tradition of owning slaves. In Merchant the Christians discriminate against the Jewish community after being raised in a sanctimonious society. In both cases the source of the discrimination is a cultural institution under a veil of religious justification.

“I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,--a justifier of the most appalling barbarity—a sanctifier of the most hateful crimes,--and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find their strongest protection.”