So, I'm in charge when a known hate group is invited to speak at my school, what would I do? Do I allow them or deny them the right to speak? I know they are going to speak inflammatory words which are half-truths at best. I know there will be no educational value what so ever, and on that ground I would have denied them. Yes, this would be revoking their freedom of speech or their First Amendment. I have long been a believer that you give your right to speak freely the second you abuse that right to spew hate and fear mongering. At the least, you have to have some semblance of truth to your words. I do not think hate speech should be protected under our first amendment. As I stated prior, there is rarely any educational value to their words and are only used to incite fear of the differences we have. I feel there is no place for this kind of speech, especially in the hot climate this country is in. You have to take into account the history of this country and the wound that racisms and slavery have left. We are attempting to move past that, to truly become a "colorblind" country. I think when we allow this hate speech to be spoken it only deepens the wound which would be moving backwards, and that isn’t the direction we want to go.
There would probably be a lawsuit. It would be ironic because the ACLU would probably be called on to defend a racist, which I find amusing. I think we need to stop being so giving with the right to free speech. There is no place in our society for false and inflammatory speech; there is simply no reason to even acknowledge it. We must get out of this age of disinformation. There are so many outlets for unverified information out there and people do not take the time to decipher it for themselves, they just take what they hear as the truth. This is why we have people walking around talking about all these crazy things regarding President Obama. It just boggles my mind that in a supposed advanced society we still fall for these tricks.
Now, I’m not sure I want free speech restricted thought. There would have to be some pretty stringent guidelines that defined a hate group or hate speech. It would have to be devoid of any and all educational content. It would also have to be verified that it indeed was false information and the only reason for it was to incite fear or violence. These are fairly basic ideas but I think you’ll get the point. We must defend this right that has been fought over for hundreds of years, we should not let it be compromised without fully exploring the ramifications. But, I do think the damage that hate speech does is very sever and is slowing the progress of this country out of the racial quagmire it is in.
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Who’s to determine if what is being said is true or not? I mean if it hateful such as Hitler was or the KKK then by all means I agree that their voices should be censored in a school setting, but they still have the right to express their views. I do not believe that free speech should be conditional I think it a right that each America has, it is what sets us apart from every other country. While I think speech can be restricted on private property such as school grounds I think that everyone is entitled to their own opinions thoughts and views and voicing them in a non violent way is a god given right. Good post I really enjoyed how you began with almost a story it really caught my attention and drew me in.
ReplyDeleteI just feel if you do not allow your school to teach hateful material why would you allow someone to speak at your school? Do i believe that people should be protected by the first amendment absolutely but some take it a bit far like when it is hateful? If you choose to do this outside of a school setting i am fine with that I don't have a problem but when you do this on a school you are going against what so many people have fought so hard to make it equally and people to be tolerant of others. This is why I liked what you wrote because hateful speech incites things of the past and only sets us back further.
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