Audio By Carbonatix
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“The Senate Banking and Insurance Committee just unanimously approved
a bill to strike the word “shylock” and “shylocking” from Florida
statutes, where it’s used synonymously and repetitiously with the term
“loan shark.” …The word is named after the [Jewish] villain in Shakespeare’s Merchant of
Venice, who demands a “pound of flesh” in satisfaction for a debt owed
by the play’s hero.”
Shylock apparently has anti-Semitic connotations, which I was not aware of, since I did not grow up in an Aryan Nation household.
This is just the latest bit of bigotry found in Florida’s legal code that has come under fire. An amendment seeking to strike a bit of obsolete language with Anti-Chinese origins was defeated in November. While a law the out and out bans homosexuals from adoption children, but not necessarily registered child abusers, was struck this past fall, but will find itself before the Supreme Court eventually.
Jeez, who wrote these Florida laws? A bunch of pre-Civil Rights era, bigoted Southerners? Oh, wait.
