Shakespeare for the Slave

Despite the fact that I think Antonio made a foolish loan that ended unfortunately for him because of unfortunate and unforeseen events, I cannot condone his apparent discrimination against Shylock. I do not see Shylock as a saint either, but I have to disagree with Antonio's treatment and attitude towards him. In an eloquent stand against discrimination, Shylock makes a very good point:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same
food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter
and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If
you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the
rest, we will resemble you in that.

That may have been his only good argument in the entire play--not a page later he's lamenting the loss of his daughter, not because she turned away from the faith or left him, but because she stole his money! He even wishes her dead! That was sickening. But however lousy of a father he is, he still was human and the passage he quotes makes me think of the slave trade (world wide, but my experience is with the history in the US), the Holocaust, child and elder abuse, the civil rights movement (again, world wide, but my experience is with our US history), Roman persecution of Christians, Christian persecution of Jews, Native Americans, and other groups, and countless other cases of discrimination and abuse throughout history and around the world rationalized because a group of people are somehow "different". I thought it ironic how, after this noble speech against discrimination and plea to treat all humans humanely, when Antonio is at his mercy and all around him are begging him for mercy, he sites the standard treatment of slaves as rational for why he should be able to do to Antonio whatever he pleased, because he "owned" him.

You have among you many a purchas'd slave,
Which, fike your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts,
Because you bought them; shall I say to you
'Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?
Why sweat they under burdens? let their beds
Be made as soft as yours, and let their

palates
Be season'd with such viands? You will answer
'The slaves are ours.' So do I answer you:
The pound of flesh which I demand of him
Is dearly bought; 'tis mine, and I will have it.

By using such treatment of slaves as justification for his own plans for Antonio, he is in essence condoning such a practice, which stands in sharp contrast to his plea for civility in the earlier quote. Perhaps he wasn't asking for civility outright--he was simply explaining why he felt the way he did, saying that he felt and reacted the same as anyone. But to me an underlying message of humane and civil treatment for all runs through that passage. It doesn't matter what people look like or where they are from or what they believe or from what socio-economic background they hie, all men are, as Jefferson said, created equal. But as some of those examples I cited earlier point out, though that phrase was a part of the Declaration of Independence, complete implementation of it did not come until much later in the history of the United States for non-land holders, blacks, and women. Perhaps it takes some time for that self-evident truth to go from being a sentiment with value which people recognize to being reflected in their actions and attitudes and practice. Thomas Jefferson himself was a slave holder, I believe, and Shylock himself felt he was justified in doing whatever he wanted to Antonio because he owned him. In Shakespeare's day it sounds like slavery was a generally accepted practice. Certainly there were huge distinctions of class. Their entire society, and many of his plays were based off of such a culture. It is interesting that people could recognize the truth of such an idea, that all men are created equal, but because of cultural norms be so blinded to blatant violations of it in their own lives. Are there similar violations in our own culture to which we are blind? And if we so blinded, are we not then slaves ourselves to that cultural norm?