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Hate speech is a term for speech intended to degrade, intimidate, or incite violence or prejudicial action against a person or group of people based on their race, gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, language ability, moral or political views, socioeconomic class, occupation or appearance (such as height, weight, and hair color), mental capacity and any other distinction-liability. The term covers written as well as oral communication and some forms of behaviors in a public setting. It is also sometimes called antilocution and is the first point on Allport\'s scale which measures prejudice in a society.
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In the United States, government is broadly forbidden by the First Amendment of the Constitution from restricting speech. Jurists generally understand this to mean that the government cannot regulate the content of speech, but that it can address the harmful effects of speech through laws such as those against defamation or incitement to riot.
Since such laws often apply only to the victimization of specific individuals, some argue[weasel words] that hate speech must be regulated to protect members of groups. Others argue[weasel words]that hate speech limits the free development of political discourse and ought to be regulated, but by voluntaristic communities and not by the state. Still others[weasel words] claim that it is not possible to legislate a boundary between legitimate controversial speech and hate speech in such a way which is just to those with controversial political or social views.
Where such laws exist they are limited by the constitutional rights to freedom of expression. For example, the German constitution is subtly more restrictive, guaranteeing \'freedom of voicing one\'s opinion\' and elsewhere restricts its misuse against the public peace. The German Criminal Code specifically forbids inciting hatred against ethnic groups, and revisionism, as in France under the Gayssot Act, is prohibited under those grounds.
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This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007) |
Various institutions in the United States and Europe began developing codes to limit or punish hate speech in the 1990s, on the grounds that such speech amounts to discrimination. Thus, such codes prohibit words or phrases deemed to express, either deliberately or unknowingly, hatred or contempt towards a group of people, based on areas such as their ethnic, cultural, religious or sexual identity, or with reference to physical health or mental health. There\'s an increase of prohibition of terms regarded as "hate speech" based on socio-economic class in the United States, same goes to regional slurs and comments in Europe. But for many North Americans and western Europeans, hate speech has become unacceptable (at least in public), immoral and sometimes, it is taboo to use certain words or discuss certain subjects they fear may be offensive or illegal. In some contexts it may also be offensive or illegal to challenge the rights of individuals based on any or all of the above criteria.
In addition to legal prohibition in many jurisdictions, prohibitions on the use of hate speech have been written into the bylaws of some governmental and non-governmental institutions, such as public universities, trade unions and other organizations (see below), though the use of speech codes in public universities in the United States is illegal, because public universities, as agents of the State, are Constitutionally restricted from regulating or penalizing speech based on content. Its use is also frowned upon by many publishing houses, broadcasting organizations and newspaper groups. However, most business corporations adapted strict rules and regulations concerning verbal conduct at the workplace. These are similar to anti-hate speech laws and any employee caught in a violation of anti-hate speech codes may be terminated. Many schools and universities have speech codes restricting some free speech. Hate speech codes are rules intended to ensure an atmosphere free from harassment and intimidation, conducive to a learning environment. Many academics have criticised these policies, arguing they are an impediment for free and uncensored discussion on controversial topics. Moreover, it is argued that the very concept of harassment is often misused and frequently cheapened, interpreting criticism (of a faith, opinion, or lifestyle) as something traumatic and harmful. Opponents of hate speech codes maintain that debate is essential to searching for the truth, and hate speech codes interfere with this mandate by silencing discussion from the very start (becoming censorship). They maintain that "harassment" should only be interpreted as a direct personal threat. They also argue that students should be confronted with perspectives they can find repulsive, as it will help strengthen their own arguments and ultimately achieve a more sturdy, well-rounded understanding of the issue.
One organization active in opposing campus speech codes is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE.
The landmark case of in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942) gave rise to a public discussion on fighting words, see also the 1918 case of Schenck.
In many countries, deliberate use of hate speech is a criminal offence prohibited under incitement to hatred legislation.
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This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007) |
Proponents of limitations on hate speech argue that repeated instances of hate speech do more than express ideas or expresses dissent; rather, hate speech often promotes and results in fear, intimidation and harassment of individuals, and may result in murder and even genocide of those it is targeted against. As such, historical revisionism is thought to be a form of propaganda which, deleting memory of real events, allows them to repeat themselves.
According to Richard Delgado, it is possible to identify hate speech on the use of certain key-words, arguing that "Words such as \'nigger\', \'spic\', \'kike\', \'chink\' and \'wop\' are badges of degradation even when used between friends: these words have no other connotation." Therefore, the act of calling someone a name should be censored if the name used belongs to a previously identified hate speech. However, Judith Butler (1997) claims that "this very statement, whether written in his text or cited here, has another connotation; he has just used the word in a significantly different way." (Butler considers that "mentioning" a word is an effective "use" of the word in another context)Butler, Judith (1997). Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-91588-0. On this basis, Butler claims that words do not have an absolute meaning, but one that depends on the context. She thus underlines the difficulty of identifying a hate-speech. Ultimately, the state itself defines the limits of acceptable discourse, according to her. However, Butler takes the precaution to explicitly deny being against all forms of limitation of discourse, the object of her book being only to point out the different issues at stake when one address the problem of hate speech and censorship. She points out, for example, that the very act of forbidding hate-speech reconducts this hate-speech, as quoted by juridical authorities, thus leading to a proliferation of this discourse - Butler\'s reasoning here follows Michel Foucault\'s statement according to which sexuality has not only been censored during the Victorian era: it was also put in discourse through a "sexuality dispositif", thus transforming "sex" into what the West names "sexuality". In this case, censorship of sexuality has made the discourse of sexuality proliferate, with the constitution of a large amount of scientific or pseudo-scientific literature on "sexuality", conceived as the secret of our own personal identities.
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This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007) |
There are a number of arguments suggested against prohibition of hate speech:
"How are we to combat effectively this Id-Evil [reference to Freud\'s Id and maybe Kant\'s radical evil] which, on account of its \'elementary\' nature, remains impervious to any rational or even purely rhetorical argumentation? That is to say, racism is always grounded in a particular fantasy (of cosa nostra, of our ethnic Thing menaced by \'them\', of \'them\' who, by means of their excessive enjoyment, pose a threat to our \'way of life\') which, by definition, resists universalization. The translation of the racist fantasy into the universal medium of symbolic intersubjectivity (the Habermasien ethics of dialogue) in no way weakens the hold of the racist fantasy upon us." Slavoj Zizek, The Metastases of Enjoyment: On Women and Causality, Verso, London, NY, 1994, p.71
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This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007) |
A central aspect of the hate speech debate is that concepts of what is acceptable and unacceptable differ, depending on eras in history and one\'s cultural and religious background. For example, personalised criticism of homosexuality (e.g., expressing the belief that homosexuality is "immoral" or harmful because it conflicts with a person\'s religious beliefs) is, to some, a valid expression of one\'s values; to others, however, it is an expression of homophobia and is therefore homophobic hate speech. Prohibition in such cases is seen by some as an interference in their rights to express their beliefs. To others, these expressions generate harmful attitudes that potentially cause discrimination.
Furthermore, words which once "embodied" negative hate speech connotations, such as \'queer\' or \'faggot\' against homosexuals, \'nigger\' against people of African origin and \'bitch\' against women, have themselves been "reclaimed" by their respective groups or communities, who attached more positive meanings to the words, so undermining their value to those who wish to use them in a negative sense. Significations differ following the context, as Judith Butler argues.
Concepts of what qualifies as hate speech broadened in the late twentieth century to include certain views expressed from an ideological standpoint. For instance, some feminists consider jokes about women or lesbians to be hate speech. Recently, the Canadian government added sexual orientation to the list of relevant characteristics eligible for protection from hate speech. Not everyone accepts that there is a difference between classic forms of hate speech, which were incitements to hatred or even to physical harm, and the use of language that merely shows disrespect. Some discussions between politically right wing and left wing can be viewed as hateful, even though the language used by both sides is not normally classified as hate speech. However, some argue that such comments demean and undermine the individuals and so should qualify as hate speech.
Attitudes towards controlling hate speech cannot be reliably correlated with the traditional political spectrum. In the United States, there is a general consensus that free speech values take precedence over limiting the harm caused by verbal insult. At the same time, some conservatives believe verbally expressed "discrimination" against religions such as blasphemy, or sometimes "morally incorrect" or "unpatriotic" speech which opposes deep-seated sociocultural or religious mores, and national interest, should be condemned or prohibited, while liberals feel the same way about verbal "discrimination" against identity-related personal characteristics, such as homosexuality and language of someone who happens not to speak English (in the US and Canada when it comes to bilingualism).
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| Topics on racism | ||
|---|---|---|
| History of racism | Apartheid • The Holocaust • Racism in the United States • Anti-racism • Civil rights movement |  |
| Racist ideologies | White supremacy • Black supremacy • Social Darwinism • Nazism • Aryanism | |
| Acts of racism | Institutional racism • State racism • Racial profiling • Racism by country • Hate speech • Racial segregation • Stereotype • Scientific racism • Slavery • Crime of apartheid | |
| Racial violence | Ethnic cleansing • Hate crime • Race war • Genocide • Lynching | |
| Racism against groups | Native Americans • Arabs • Armenians • Blacks • Chinese • Iranians • Irish • Italians • Japanese • Jews • Mexicans • Poles • Roma people • South Asians • Whites | |
| Racist groups | Ku Klux Klan • Neo-Nazis • Grey Wolves • South African National Party • Nation of Islam | |
| Anti-racist groups and movements | NAACP • Anti-Defamation League • Anti-Fascist Action • Civil Rights Movement • Southern Poverty Law Center • Searchlight | |
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