Appropriately Defining “Hate Speech”

Asymmetric use of terminology is a sure sign of political disingenuity. Whenever you hear an argument that amounts to, “when I do it it’s fine, but when you do it it’s bad, and we have a word for that,” be suspicious. A prime example, from the rhetoric of the right: Islam in public schools is unconscionable, but the abandonment of Christian prayer in the same schools is censorship. The first amendment’s injunction against religion in schools – a neutral principle – is nowhere to be found. The lack of any attempt to come to an agreement of neutral application ought to be a clear tip-off to viewpoint discrimination & politicking.

Another prime example is the renewed tendency of paleoconservative websites to refer to liberal arguments as “hate speech,” while decrying the use of the same label against themselves. The failure of either side to articulate a compelling reason why one form of inflammatory partisan rhetoric is “hate speech,” while the other is not, ought to be proof of the need for a neutral principle either for or against “hate speech.” And, due to the definitional problems posed, I’m afraid I have to agree with Justice Scalia, that by our first amendment, we ought to learn to deal with “hate speech” rather than ban it:

What we have here, it must be emphasized, is not a prohibition of fighting words that are directed at certain persons or groups (which would be facially valid if it met the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause); but rather, a prohibition of fighting words that contain… messages of “bias-motivated” hatred and, in particular, as applied to this case, messages “based on virulent notions of racial supremacy.”  One must wholeheartedly agree… that “[i]t is the responsibility, even the obligation, of diverse communities to confront such notions in whatever form they appear,” but the manner of that confrontation cannot consist of selective limitations upon speech… The point of the First Amendment is that majority preferences must be expressed in some fashion other than silencing speech on the basis of its content.

R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992) (internal citations omitted).

After all, what speech is “hate speech” and what isn’t is really just a question of what the majority wants, dissenters be damned (and muzzled).  Why Scalia chooses to limit the power of the majority here, but nowhere else, is beyond me, but the point is still valid: the “hate speech” label reduces to a slick way of saying, “I don’t like you.”  It may be that there is a way to cordon off truly offensive speech without amounting to viewpoint discrimination.  But I haven’t found it, and neither has the legal academy.  Until they do, when you hear the term “hate speech” from either side of the spectrum, be suspicious.