Talk:Hate speech
I think this could be expanded somewhat. The general Conservative line is that hate speech is equivalent to "mean speech", which is far from the truth. It could be a good refutation at some point, I think. --Kels 14:54, 17 September 2007 (EDT)
[edit] Just sent this to Ed Poor, fyi for everyone about hate speech
Ed, I've been following your, err, discussion on the hate crimes bill. Several comments.
- No liberal would ever suggest that the law should criminalize "God prohibits homosexual behavior." Indeed, a liberal interpretation of the First Amendment would let you go much farther than that. It might be a silly interpretation of the Bible, and a ridiculous viewpoint, but quite so, all liberals would defend to the death your right to say that. Any prohibition on such a speech act would surely run afoul of the Constitution. I do not believe a mainstream liberal would disagree with this statement. You know how very pro-gay rights I am, and therefore my assurance should count for something.
- I do not believe that the current hate crime bill, as proposed, would criminalize this activity either. The act cited here criminalizes only violence motivated by bigotry; as a proto-lawyer, I recognize that this law will be well-nigh impossible to enforce, and somewhat silly at that. I think the purpose is more of a deterrent than an actual bona-fide attempt to prosecute. Regardless, though, it would not infringe speech rights, unless the speech were coupled with violent action.
- The idea that the "Gospel will be outlawed" by hate crime laws is empirically disproven. England, while I was working in Parliament, passed the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006. The Act goes much farther than any United States measures have, criminalizing speech designed to incite the violent acts. However, no such chilling effect or stifling effect on British religiosity has occurred. Thus, even the radical British measure would not cause the feared harms.
- Further, a law passed in the vein of the British Act would be unconstitutional, as any liberal would tell you. Seditious libel and seditious incitement are issues at the frontier of First Amendment law, and the well-settled United States interpretation (however, as my professor notes, this interpretation has yet to be tested with a "hard case" like this would present) would in fact permit incitement to racial or religious intolerance, so long as it did not provoke immediate violent activity. Even standing in a town square yelling, "all those gays ought to die; the Bible says so," like Fred Phelps, is protected speech. Thus, the Constitution would immediately strike down the American analogue to the British law, even though it has had a null effect. And what's more, I expect the ACLU would take that case, for your side. They have a well-documented history of defending unpopular First Amendment issues.
Just a few thoughts. You should probably include this in the article; it is intellectually dishonest to set up a straw man as you appear to have done.-αmεσ (tailor) 14:50, 21 September 2007 (EDT)
It's just my opinion, but it's pretty wierd that "Hate Crime" ends up linking to "hate speech." Linking the two is a pretty common right-wing practice when opposing hate crimes legislation, but I'm not quite sure what it's doing here. — Unsigned, by: 64.106.85.43 / talk / contribs
The two usually get mixed up probably because they both contain the word "hate". I have no problem with hate crime laws as they are only really invoked when actual violence is perpetrated against a protected group and only then would your hate speech be used against you in a court of law. That's reasonable, especially in the Anglo world until relatively recently which is a shameful development. It should also be noted that the UN has been behind hate speech laws in a lot of (but not all) countries and I think that should be mentioned in the article somewhere, regarding our non-US readers. There really needs to be more civil liberties organizations in more countries dedicated to free speech activism and being against the implementation of laws against hate speech. 68.46.9.6 (talk) 02:37, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
[edit] Skin color?
By "skin color", you mean "race", right? Types of humans can be distinguishible by more than just skin color. Hair textures and facial features come to mind. Some black people can have the same skin tone as some Indians, but the two races are still easily distinguishible from one another (blacks have thicker skin, and Indians caucasoid bone structure and hair texture). Ghandi infamously made that clear.
Likewise, some Northeast Asians can have the same skin color as some white people, but they're still not white. They can even be lighter-skinned, if you compare some Japanese from some Portuguese for instance.
So I think "race" would be a more accurate term here.
PS: I mean "race" here the way most people use it: in the physical anthropological sense, the phenotype, i.e. a bunch of people that remained isolated for some time and developed distinguishible physical features from other bunches of people, not biological. Whether it has a basis in biology or not is another issue.
105.101.118.97 (talk) 01:15, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
- I'm not sure: whites and Arabs are technically the same race (both being caucasian), but that doesn't stop darker-toned Arabs being subject to hate speech. Maybe listing skin colour and race would be the best idea? King Skeleton (talk) 01:51, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
Yes, and a more specific term for that is "colorism" -- discrimination based on skin color even within individuals who identify as the same race. I read that it happens in the black community for example. It's generally lumped with racism.
And for that reason I think it's best to put both of them. Most laws that prohibit discimination in most countries put both "race" and "color".
http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2008-title42/html/USCODE-2008-title42-chap7-subchapV-sec708.htm