Hate Speech and Biased Speech

Hate speech, or racist speech, is often cited as undeserving of First Amendment protection. Proponents argue that hate speech is not speech at all, but really a "verbal assault." If the point of the First Amendment is to insure a "marketplace of ideas," out of which truth emerges, then racist speech has no value. As Charles Lawrence notes, someone using racist speech is not trying to open a dialogue or discover truth, but instead is trying to injure the listener (Goshgarian 382). Thus, hate speech belongs with other unprotected speech, such as obscenity, official secrets, and libel (Goshgarian 384).

Lawrence finds support for this argument not in a free-speech case but in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court's landmark desegregation decision. "Brown held that segregated schools were inherently unequal because of the

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rds her or his race. Is that person subject to discipline? What if the speaker does not know that he or she is uttering a racial epithet? Who decides what words are banned and what words are permissible? These questions and others arise every time a speech regulation is proposed. We have no answers, only the First Amendment. Limitations on speech lead to more limitations, and soon people keep quiet for fear of running afoul of the state. In time the government has too much power, and other rights are lost. The cornerstone of republican government is free speech, and even if the best ideas do not always win out, the worst ideas are almost always drowned out. Lawrence discredits that concept, rejecting the notion that more speech is the cure for "bad" speech (in other words, hate speech). That notion, no matter how simplistic, has some truth. Racial epithets that were commonly used 40 years ago, even in the media, are never used today in public contexts. Those who utter a racial epithet on television lose their careers, while those who do so at work often lose their jobs. In this instance, peer pressure is better than government pressure. Government regulation of speech, no matter how well intentioned, is unnecessary
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Approximate Word count = 1502
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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