Mon 12 Nov 2012
Hateful Speech
Posted by Joseph Spoerl under Joseph Spoerl , Philosophy Department Blog , Weekly Word[3] Comments
Our society is increasingly sensitive to the ways in which hateful speech can lead to violent actions or discrimination against people based on skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or national background. This is a good thing: we all have a moral obligation to be courteous and respectful in the way we talk to and about each other. In speech as in all other actions, we should treat others as we wish to be treated. Moreover, hateful stereotypes can indeed foment discrimination or even violence (witness the Matthew Shepard tragedy).
However, the category of impermissible speech seems to be widening all the time, and this can pose some problems for freedom of speech and inquiry. Consider some examples. The mother of Tyler Clementi, the gay Rutgers student who took his own life after being secretly filmed in an intimate act with a man, has recently left her evangelical Christian church because that church teaches that homosexual acts are morally wrong. She now believes that such teaching helps to create the homophobia that drove her son to suicide. In Canada, where hate speech is illegal, some Christian pastors have been prosecuted merely for condemning homosexual activity from the pulpit. Some Christian theologians, seeking to overcome centuries of Christian anti-Semitism, have called for Christian churches to stop teaching that Jews ought to convert to Christianity or that Christianity has replaced or superseded Judaism as a religion. Many people today who criticize Islam are attacked as Islamophobes, since a negative opinion of Islam could lead to discrimination against Muslims. Pro-life activists are sometimes blamed for attacks on abortion clinics or providers, merely because they condemn abortion.
Such thinking seems to take mere moral or religious disagreements and elevate them to the level of impermissible speech. The reasoning seems to be that certain moral or religious judgments have been associated with hateful, violent, or discriminatory actions in the past, so such judgments must now be abandoned to avoid such abuses. I see four problems with this reasoning.
First, moral and religious disagreement is an irreducible aspect of the human condition. Such disagreements are not going to end anytime soon.
Second, the problem is not the mere fact of disagreement but the way the conflicting positions are expressed. One can express a principled opposition to homosexual activity, for example, using language that is restrained, respectful, and non-abusive, or one can express it in abusive or hateful ways. The latter is wrong; the former is not. We should focus on educating people to express their differing moral and religious beliefs in language that is as fair and as respectful and as courteous as possible. But surely it is utopian to tell them to stop disagreeing at all.
Third, the range of beliefs that have been associated with violent, abusive, or intolerant behavior is huge. Atheism was part of the official ideology of Communist countries that brutally persecuted religious believers for decades. Should we tell atheists to abandon atheism because of the crimes of some other atheists? Adolf Hitler and the Nazis incorporated Darwinian evolutionary theory and Mendelian genetic theory into their racist ideology. Should we tell biologists to stop teaching these theories because they have been associated with a violent and repressive political movement? The language of universal human rights was an integral part of the French Revolution, which led to the Reign of Terror and the imperialism and tyranny of Napoleon. Should we abandon any talk of universal human rights for this reason?
Fourthly and finally, there is a self-referential logical problem with telling people to abandon moral or religious positions that have been associated with violence or intolerance or discrimination. Not long ago a gay-rights-activist shot a security guard at the office of an anti-gay-marriage organization in a Washington DC suburb of Virginia. If moral opposition to gay marriage or gay sex is wrong because it has been associated with violence against gays in some times and places, must we now say that a pro-gay-rights position is wrong for the same reason? Is everyone thus morally obliged simply to stop talking about gay marriage, the moral status of gay sex, or the dangers of homophobia? This is a reductio ad absurdum of the failure to distinguish between mere moral or religious disagreement, on the one hand, and truly hateful speech, on the other.
Thanks so much for this post on a timely subject. As usual, it is well and clearly argued.
You are undoubtedly right that it does not follow from the the fact that a claim has been associated with violence that it is not true or that one should not discuss it.
I wonder, though, if there isn’t something more behind the the trend that you recognize, a trend I think to be in some ways a good thing. It also doesn’t follow from the fact that one judges an act to be immoral that one should tell any who who engages in the act that they are immoral, nor that you should prevent them from doing it. What follows is that you ought not to do it. The question is how are we to get along with people who don’t act as we think they ought to.
If I am any indication, the world is full of sinners with multiple and sundry flaws both small and great, and they don’t seem to plan to stop any time soon. How are we to live with them in a family, in a workplace, in a community, in a nation? Of course, sometimes, the sins are grave enough to warrant our forcible intervention, but where they don’t, how ought we to treat them?
There are two types of considerations, I think, that lead to the trend you identify:
(1) Unless you have a special relationship of love or responsibility with a person, continually mentioning their failings undermines the respect and dignity we must afford our neighbors to fruitfully interact with them. If I constantly harped on the moral failings of my family members or my co-workers they might rightfully find it offensive or abusive. This is especially true if they are members of a marginal group that have been the victim of abuses of their basic rights. Questioning the morals of a rape victim is offensive even if there might be reason to. Words have other functions than bearing truth. When one makes a moral claim that your audience already knows and has made a judgement on, and you haven’t been invited to discussion, what, precisely is the purpose of your speech? Sometimes insult and offence can masquerade as moral judgement.
(2) What makes us so interested in improving the moral character of the people we are judging on these particular grounds? There are all kinds of ways in which we might try to improve people, and lots of people who need improving. The choice of our targets itself often reveals ulterior motives and reinforces harmful stereotypes. If someone is constantly worried about the private masturbatory abuses of the people around them, we might justifiably wonder what has them so interested. And if they constantly choose one offense over other equally bad ones, or choose one group of afflicted, weak, or denigrated persons to judge over the powerful and the popular, we might also question their motives.
Now all of this is not to say that we should restrict the discussion of controversial topics in forums that are friendly and designed for intellectual debate, but the uninvited expression of moral positions under the two types of conditions above can make us, like Mark Twain, want to walk the other way as fast as we can when someone professes the desire to improve us morally.
I will open first by saying I am new to the blog and am mostly posting thoughts on the topic. I am open to any and all criticism and in fact welcome all views. If I offended any this was not my aim. Writing is not a strong area of mine, but do enjoy an educated discussion which is why I am writing, and will be reading.
First in response to the first post I do agree that as humans, each with different upbringings we each will always have disagreements. However, we often try to find those who are most closely in line with our personal beliefs. For the third statement there are always people who are associated with groups that commit hateful acts. However, this does not mean we judge an entire group based on information of one. If there is a pattern of hateful people coming from a certain group over a significant amount of time, then it is right to have this group abandoned. This post also leads me to further thoughts about this subject.
I believe what is often the reasoning behind hateful speech is a lack of education. For example when I talk to a random person about Islamic people it is often related to terrorism. With certain events in past people often put terrorists with Islamic people. However, educated people know not all Islamic people are terrorists, but some Islamic people have been terrorists.
My next thought on hateful speech is a question I think about often. I find that people who are truely good listeners and form their own opinions from information from both sides often are less hateful. On the opposite those who shut out information can be more hateful. I am wondering if this is something that is seen by others, or even if my thinking is flawed.
My next thought on hateful speech is more directed at receiver of this hateful language. I feel, as the human race, we give power to the words we use, often the receiver. If we, as a society, use certain words more often and are “thrown around”, they lose significance and power. However, if there is a certain word that is not used often that is a hateful/”bad” word, once used catches the attention of many.
My last thought that ties in with the previous is that of reverse racism. Caucasian people have been racist towards many other races, and because of this, they must now be more sensitive to other races. If a Caucasian person were to call a black person by the “N” word then it would be considered extremely offensive. However, from one black person to another it is often a common word in my experience. Another is that a term used against Caucasians, cracker. I believe it is still a derogatory term against them, but it is not frowned upon at all from my experience, unlike the “N” word.
I feel that sometimes only time will heal and eliminate more hate language. With time many things heal. Or in this case I feel with time hate dies out. The people who are stubborn and against “fill in the blank” eventually die and the thoughts and reasoning behind them die off as well. As this happens people begin to forget why it happened in the first place and changes then happens. However, this does not always happen quickly.
I think Dave’s concerns are covered by the moral obligation to treat others as we would wish to be treated. I agree that there is a time and a place for everything, and importuning others with our opinions or advice is often rude and inappropriate. But my comments nowhere suggest that my main concern is with defending an unrestricted right to lecture others about their alleged moral failings. My concern is with preserving the freedom to investigate and argue about truth-claims about religion, ethics, or other issues that are central to human life. Perhaps I should have mentioned a piece of background information that motivated my comments, namely, that a huge portion of the world — Canada, Europe, India, most Muslim countries — have laws on the books right now criminalizing speech deemed blasphemous or disrespectful or hateful to certain groups. As I write these words, Turkey’s leading composer, Fazil Say, is being prosecuted for hate speech and insulting religion for criticizing Islamic fundamentalists in Turkey. The Turkish government is playing a key role in a global effort by the 56 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to make “defamation of religion” a crime. The USA is under increasing pressure at the UN and elsewhere to effectively abandon its first-amendemnt protection for free speech.