Freedom of Speech & Hate Speech Americans value the freedom of speech

Americans value the freedom of speech assured them in the U.S. Constitution, but they also seem to accept that there are some boundaries to freedom of speech, though what those boundaries are is controversial and may shift over time. One issue of free speech today is described under the title "Political Correctness," or "PC." It is defined as efforts by certain political groups, primarily those on the left, to enforce some form of speech code in order to control speech to ban any term or phrase that might be considered demeaning to any group in society, so-called "hate speech." One of the problems with these efforts is the vagueness of the terms used to define it--what is "demeaning," and how is it to be decided when a given phrase is demeaning or not? Richard Goldstein writes,

The perception of crisis is why hate speech has become a divisive issue among progressives. The distressing force of the current backlash against hard-won minority rights creates a fundamental conflict between our commitment to free expression and our desire to protect and preserve the victims of abuse. The result is an aching uncertainty about where to draw the line (Goldstein 412).

The question, then, is whether campus speech codes are the right way to address the problem of hate speech, or if such speech codes violate free speech to such a degree that they should not be adopted. Campus speech codes are indeed the wrong way to address this problem, and they are especially wrong because

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Native Americans & Canadians .... destroyers driven by envy and hate, they work .... to the Native American struggle for identity, independence and freedom. .... and deprivation of free speech would not .... (4546 18 )

otes first that there "are very strong reasons for protecting even racist speech," but he then states that he is troubled by the way such speech might lead to violence (Lawrence 39). The real reason why he supports hate speech codes, though, is his view that hate speech creates victims, noting that we tend to show "little understanding of their injury" and that "we have abandoned those whose race, gender, or sexual preference continues to make them second-class citizens" (Lawrence 39). Lawrence sees hate speech codes as protecting the constitutional rights of women and black and other minority students. He cites the case of Brown v. Board of Education, which, while it was not specifically about speech, did articulate the principle of equal citizenship by finding segregated schools inherently unequal: If we understand the necessity of eliminating the system of signs and symbols that signal the inferiority of blacks, then we should hesitate before proclaiming that all racist speech that stops short of physical violence must be defended (Lawrence 40). Lawrence also tries to refute the idea that the antidote for unwanted speech is more speech, for instead, he expresses the belief that hate speech prevents other kinds of speech

Category: Government - F