United States Is An Outlier In Its Tolerance Of Hate and Racism – But Why?
Posted on May 13, 2011
Hot off the presses, the University of Pennsylvania’s Spring 2011 Edition of its Journal of International Law features an article from Professor Tanya Katerí Hernández. The article goes beyond traditional comparisons of hate speech laws in Europe and the US, incorporating the Latin America perspective (it is aptly titled, “Hate Speech and The Language of Racism in Latin America: A Lens for Reconsidering Global Hate Speech Restrictions and Legislation Models”).
As someone who has been advocating against hate and racism for the entirety of my short legal career, this is a piece after my own heart. Here’s a short excerpt:
“In Latin America, like many countries in Europe, hate speech is prohibited. Yet Latin America is rarely included in the transnational discussion regarding the regulation of hate speech. Instead, the discourse focuses on a comparison of the advisability of Europe’s hate speech regulations and free speech acceptance of hate speech in the United States. … It is especially critical to broaden the hate speech debate now that we are seeing an apparent rise in the occurrence of hate speech worldwide.”
Hernández cites NHMC’s Petition for Inquiry on Hate Speech in Mediaas evidence that hate speech is on the rise. Then, in examining international norms, Hernández observes that the “significant harms hate speech incites have engendered a widespread international consensus that it should be illegal” but that the United States is “the extreme exception with an absolutist vision of free speech where much of hate speech is tolerated despite the fact that actual First Amendment doctrine does permit speech regulation in other contexts.”
Now, before you misunderstand my intentions, please hear me out for a moment. NHMC has said time and again, it IS NOT seeking and it WILL NEVER seek anti-hate speech laws and regulations in the US. So that’s not where I’m going with this. However, I can’t help but fascinate over why we the people of the US, have decided that hate speech is part of free speech.
Most of you probably know that not all speech is Constitutionally-protected. The obvious – and in my opinion, overused – example is that one cannot yell “FIRE” in a crowded theater. But there are many more. To name a few, journalists can be prevented from disclosing military information in war time; obscene, indecent and profane material may not broadcast between 6am and 10pm; and conversations that rise to conspiracies are criminally punishable. None of these exceptions to free speech originated in the US Constitution. Rather, they were developed through legislation, administrative orders and court decisions, melding to the desires of the people. Striving for balance between free speech and other extremely important concerns, such as public safety, troop safety, child protection and crime prevention.
Recognizing that various exceptions to free speech have been created through the people’s will, and not the Constitution, is it so wrong for me to ask: why do people in this country work so hard to protect the haters and the racists? Do we really believe that hate speech significantly contributes to our democracy? Even to the extent that hate does have a role in our society, does that outweigh the grave harms that hate speech poses? NHMC’s Petition for Inquiry notes a number of those harms, including dramatic increases in hate crimes against people of color, LGBT people, people of certain religions and other targeted groups, immense psychological damage to hate speech targets (particularly to children and teens), along with the legitimization of racism and intolerance of those perceived to be “the others”.
Hernández teaches us that the international community sees it differently. In protecting hate speech, the US parts ways with the United Nations, and the majority of Latin American and European countries (most of which also have freedom of expression laws). As Hernández reports, these countries chose to enact hate speech laws because “there is little social value in racist speech whose basic purpose is to degrade others, deny them their identity as human beings, exclude them from the entitlements of the basic social and constitutional covenant, and expose them to violence. By denying human dignity to some people, hate speech attacks the very basis of democratic systems.”
Hernández goes on to discuss the growing international trend of rejection of racism and hate. So is the US behind the times? Over two years ago, NHMC asked the federal government not for regulation, not for legislation, but rather to merely EXAMINE this issue and to start a public dialogue about civil discourse. Yet the two main federal agencies under which this issue falls, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, have done NOTHING. Thousands in the US have lost their lives to hate in the intervening time period. If you’d like the US to keep up with the times, please subscribe to this blog so that you can stay up to date on what NHMC is doing to eliminate hate and racism in the US, and so that you can add your name to the growing list of people, organizations and countries that oppose hate.
Jessica Gonzalez is the Vice President of Policy and Legal Affairs at the National Hispanic Media Coalition. You can see the original post at the National Hispanic Media Coalition blog.
A right to offend?
Onora O'Neill - The Guardian, Monday 13 February 2006
The decision by a Danish newspaper to print cartoons of the prophet Muhammad provoked protests around the world and a debate about freedom of speech. Philosopher Onora O'Neill considers the limits of liberty
Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, intended to make a point about free speech when he commissioned and published the now notorious cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. As he saw it, free speech in Denmark was at risk not from censorship, but from self-censorship. Danish writers and artists had become reluctant to write or speak openly about Islam or about Muslim immigration into Denmark. Publishing cartoons of the prophet would supposedly exemplify and reaffirm rights of free speech.
Four months after they were first published, after millions of words of commentary, countless protests and denunciations, energetic exacerbation of the dispute by zealous advocates both of free speech and of restraint of speech, several burnings of embassies, much violence and around a dozen deaths (so far), Flemming Rose has expressed regret about what happened. However, he maintains that: "We do not apologise for printing the cartoons. It was our right to do so." (The Times, Feb 1 2006).
Sage reminders
This standard liberal view is often tempered with sage reminders that it would be better if rights to free speech were used "responsibly". Many moderate Muslims, and others, have claimed that this particular exercise of free speech, far from being responsible, was unacceptable because it was offensive, insulting or provocative. Some more extreme Muslims have used the free speech they enjoy in western countries to urge that those who published the cartoons be punished, even executed.
Most defenders of free speech think that the advocates of "responsible" free speech, of legal restraint on free speech, let alone of execution for (what is deemed) unacceptable speech, simply fail to understand what rights to free speech are for. Flemming Rose's recent comments are typical: "I think some of the Muslims who have reacted very strongly to these cartoons are being driven by totalitarian and authoritarian impulses, and the nature of these impulses is that if you give in once they will just put forward new requirements." (The Times, February 1 2006)
Yet even committed liberals don't seriously think that rights to free speech are unlimited or unconditional, although they seem to be unsure about which limits should be set. They are often torn between an aspiration to justify free speech as minimal and uncontroversial, and a contrary belief that free speech matters because it is not minimal but powerful. This double vision is well reflected in contemporary tendencies to construe freedom of speech as freedom of expression. Freedom of expression sounds so harmless: merely a matter of expressing oneself, seemingly no more than an aspect of individual privacy. Yet most speech acts are not merely expressive. They are intended to communicate, and may affect, even harm others. The nursery jingle "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me" is palpably false.
The tradition of justifying free speech as a minimal, uncontroversial freedom has very respectable origins. Immanuel Kant called free speech the most innocuous freedom, and tried to persuade enlightened despots to respect it. John Stuart Mill equated free speech with freedom of expression, as no more than self- regarding action. Yet both of them accepted that most speech acts are not mere self-expression, and that many are far from innocuous. They both argued that some speech acts can harm and must be restricted to protect others and their rights.
Kant argued that the free speech for officials, clergy and others who exercise authority may be far from innocuous, so may be legitimately controlled and restricted. Mill argued that free speech does not entitle us to perform speech acts that harm others, concluding that there is no right to defame others, or to shout "fire!" in a crowded theatre (causing panic, and perhaps deaths).
Rights to free speech have always been seen as limited by other serious considerations, and must often be so restricted if we are to respect other rights. Nobody thinks that a right to free speech confers an unconditional licence to intimidate, to incite hatred, to defraud, to deceive or the like, and nobody thinks that the law should protect speech acts that harm, injure or put others at risk.
It is a pity that the Millian conflation of (seemingly innocuous) freedom of expression with (sometimes injurious) freedom of speech has now been entrenched in the vocabulary of human rights conventions, and in wider discussions of free speech. For example, the European Convention on Human Rights, Art 10, i, proclaims a right to freedom of expression, characterised as "freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers". This formulation suggests that free speech is for individuals, whose self-expression it protects against state power, and in particular against censorship. So far, so fine.
However article 10 is taken to apply just as much to speech and publication by those with power to reach and affect the world at large. Yet any thought that the speech of the powerful is no more than self-expression is implausible. According the local, relatively powerless press of Mill's day the same freedom of expression as individuals may have seemed uncontroversial. A free press was then often seen as the champion of the weak, and as augmenting and giving voice to the powerless.
Conferring the same freedom of expression on more powerful organisations, including media organisations, is now less easily justified. Once we take account of the power of the media, we are not likely to think that they should enjoy unconditional freedom of expression. We do not think that corporations should have unrestricted rights to invent their balance sheets, or governments to damage or destroy the reputations of individuals or institutions, or to deceive their electorates. Yet contemporary liberal readings of the right to free speech often assume that we can safely accord the same freedom of expression to the powerless and the powerful.
Tough questions
However, even if we conclude that freedom of expression should be accorded to institutions as well as to individuals, the publication of the Danish cartoons raises tough questions. The second part of article 10 the European convention sheds some light on them. It sets out the basis for legitimate restrictions on freedom of expression: "The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary."
While the European convention assigns "freedom of expression" both to individuals and institutions, it balances that freedom with rights to set conditions on its use. In effect it proclaims not an unrestricted right to freedom of expression, but a defeasible right - essentially, one that may be overridden to protect other important rights.
The publication of these cartoons was clearly acceptable under Danish law, even if they were seen by some as offensive, provocative, insulting or blasphemous. Yet their publication was certainly no mere act of self-expression. Flemming Rose's intentions in publishing were apparently to provoke self-censoring Danes. He may not have intended to provoke Muslims. (However, Jyllands-Posten had a certain reputation in this area: a 2004 report by the European Network Against Racism concluded that the paper devoted disproportionate time and space to negative reporting on ethnic minorities.) With help from others who publicised the cartoons, including from many who supposedly opposed their publication, a provincial provocation was magnified into global insult.
It is standardly said that free speech must include a right to say things that are offensive or provocative, but not rights to defame, insult, let alone intimidate. These supposed distinctions are inevitably unclear because interpretations of speech acts vary with audiences. Danes might read the cartoons as no more than mildly provocative and offensive; many Muslims have read them as insulting and defamatory. If we think of speech as mere self-expression, we are likely to think that what has happened is in no way the responsibility of Jyllands-Posten or of Flemming Rose. But if we think of free speech as exercised in communicating with audiences, and remember that audiences vary greatly in the way they will read what is said and written, we may find reason to be more circumspect.
Jyllands-Posten could have communicated legitimate worries about self-censorship in ways that would have found resonance and respect. The way in which they chose to convey their worries were likely to be read by some as offensive, insulting and defamatory. The same is true of the speech acts both of those who publicised the cartoons in the name of free speech, and of those who publicised them to oppose free speech.
· Onora O'Neill is professor of philosophy in Cambridge and principal of Newnham College
Anti-Bullying Laws Get Tough With Schools
by Emily Bazelon - September 17, 2011
New Jersey's Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights, considered by many as the toughest legislation against bullying in the nation, went into effect this month. Host Scott Simon talks with Emily Bazelon of Slate Magazine about bullying laws, where they're working and where they're headed (hint: the Supreme Court).
Suicide of Megan Meier
Megan Taylor Meier (November 6, 1992 – October 17, 2006), was an American teenager from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, who committed suicide by hanging three weeks before her fourteenth birthday. A year later, Meier's parents prompted an investigation into the matter and her suicide was attributed to cyber-bullying through the social networking website MySpace. The mother of a friend of Meier, Lori Drew, was later indicted on the matter in 2008, but in 2009, Drew was acquitted.[1]
From the third grade, Megan had been under the care of a psychiatrist. She had been prescribed citalopram, methylphenidate and ziprasidone.[2] She had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and depression, and had self-esteem issues regarding her weight. [3] She was described by her parents as a "bubbly, goofy" girl who enjoyed spending time with her friends and family.[4]
The account through which the bullying of Meier took place purportedly belonged to a 16-year-old male named "Josh Evans." However, Lori Drew, the mother of a former friend of Meier, later admitted creating the MySpace account with her daughter and Ashley Grills, Lori Drew's 18-year-old employee. Several people contributed to running the faked account, including Drew. Witnesses testified that the women intended to use Meier’s e-mails with "Josh" to get information about her and later humiliate her, in retribution for her allegedly spreading gossip about Drew's daughter.
Megan Meier's story was first reported in the St. Charles Journal, and reader comments focused on unnamed adults implicated in the hoax — who were later revealed to be Lori and Curt Drew.[18] Later, the focus was on the St. Louis Suburban Journals's decision not to print the name of the Drews. The reporter stated in an interview that the names were withheld out of concern for the minor child of the hoaxer.[20] However, the identity of the chief perpetrator, Lori Drew, was quickly revealed by webloggers, who reported finding the names of the parents within minutes from the information given in the article,[25][26] followed by the media eventually revealing Lori Drew's name and photograph.[15] Banas said he was aware of the national outrage against the Drews, which originated on the Internet in response to the Steve Pokin article in the O'Fallon Journal.[16] The Drews have had their home and work addresses, phone and cell phone numbers, and aerial photos of their home posted on the Internet. The Drews' property had also been vandalized. Banas said some of these actions against the Drews could constitute Internet stalking.[16] "Because we can’t prosecute somebody it certainly does not justify violating the law," Banas said. "We live in this country by the rule of the law." He described Lori Drew as "upset, cautious and guarded" when he interviewed her. Banas said that Mrs. Drew felt "terrible" about Meier's death.[16] A vigil was held for Megan Meier on November 24, 2007. The crowd gathered in a near-by parking lot and walked past the homes of the Meiers and the Drews. A small piece of ground adjacent to the Drews' house was the scene of remembrances by friends of the Meiers.[27]