Hate Speech Blog?
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 05/15/2008 - 9:50am.
Why isn’t there a moderator for blog posts? Many of the posts are quite hateful and inflammatory toward certain people based on their housing and economic status.
Is the Venice Neighborhood Council a forum for hate speech?
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Hate speech is free, too
Good question! The short answer is “Sometimes, yes! Hate speech is allowed the same exposure as love speech.”
Short answers, however, are unsatisfying for such a deceptively complex question.
Defining what constitutes hate speech requires its own set of rules and procedures, which deserve an entire forum on their own.
This forum currently adheres to the principle that speech must be free. As our forum, it will take on the flavor we dictate by what we say and how we say it.
The question of whether it should be a place to vent, or a place to discuss and suggest solutions (or both), is something to discuss at a monthly Board meeting.
Emotional content and sensitivity of issues is often high. This forum can be a potent vehicle for airing, discussing and resolving community concerns, stakeholder by stakeholder. The other side of this coin is that personal grudges, either against a policy or a group of people, receive the same attention.
One potential forum improvement – in some people’s eyes – would be to prohibit anonymous postings (such as the one to which I’m responding right now). This would provide a somewhat higher level of accountability for people who want to participate in the forum. At the same time, it could prevent valuable issues (such as the one about which I’m responding right now) from receiving attention, as many people will only post something if they can remain anonymous.
Like it or not, hate speech receives the same entitlement to exposure that other speech receives in our society. This may change in time; we’re beginning to see proposed legislation to govern “online bullying,” along with a more accepting attitude towards behavior that prior generations considered invasions of privacy. Easy, immediate online communication is changing our perception of what is acceptable to write in public, and of what we consider private. In 1978, a group of Nazis received court approval to march in Skokie, IL, based on their free speech rights. Could that happen today? Ten years from now?
One way to limit hate speech would be to prosecute it in a court of law – prove that it directly led to some illegal act.
A more practical antidote might be to meet it with an equally strong but positive response, combined with a persistent tolerance for the reactions we all have when under stress.
Both are easy to say, but hard to perfect.
So, the answer to the question is not simple. It probably varies from person to person.
What do you think?
Regards,
Jed Pauker
Venice