Originally a comment by quixote on Hey the chant was on a school trip, so obviously no biggy.
Bigotry is harmful. Bigoted drunken chants are no exception. Bigotry uses speech to hurt, not to express a train of reasoning. It’s weaponized speech, and as such it stops free speech. It is the antithesis of free speech. The clearest example is not in racist speech but in gendered mobs aimed at women on the web, which is nastily effective at both hurting and silencing women while expressing no thoughts at all. It’s just plain old hatred and plain old hate speech.
This concept seems to be difficult mainly for some white males who are almost never the targets of weaponized speech.
To give an example of ideas that could be considered racist that are not weaponized, researchers (this was many years ago) wanted to study whether blacks were more violent than whites. They almost got shut down for racism, but ultimately managed to do an acceptable controlled study. (The short answer is no. Blacks as a group were actually slightly less violent than whites matched for age, gender, and income.) The difference was on the order of 13% vs 15% or something like that.
Of course, the great gaping chasm of difference was between males and females. 85% of violent attacks were committed by men, a little bit over 5% were not-directly-provoked attacks by women, and 10% were violence by women in response to attacks by men. I believe the numbers are still very similar.
And the fact that this vast difference was not being studied, while the piddling non-difference between races was studied woke up the sociology community to the fact that, yes, it really was a racist question. But my point is that you do have to ask the obnoxious question to see the answer. That kind of speech is and should be protected. There is an idea behind it. That is different from abuse and hate speech.
If we — meaning people like I’m-all-right-Jack Volokh — don’t wake up to the difference between abuse and speech, there’s not going to be any free speech for anyone except the Volokhs. Maybe that’s why he’s okay with it.
My problem with your perspective comes to the fore when you have to jump from racism to misogyny to make a resonant point. Actual data on identity-based violence shows violence against women is the overwhelming issue and feminists should be focusing on women as women (i.e. rejecting intersectionality), yet racial issues dominate political and media discourse, with some room for LGBT concerns (i.e. violence that is primarily against men).
For every incident like this frat song, there are thousands of rape threats and other statements of violent misogyny made. Those are viable threats that link to an actual pattern of overwhelming violence against women. The chance of those frat brothers actually wanting to lynch a black person are miniscule (they think they are being ‘funny’ because the violence they sing about is in the past) and the chance of them actually doing it even less.
By turning these morons into free speech martyrs, because Volkh is correct in his analysis of their Constitutional rights, it actually weakens the effort to reign in truly dangerous misogynistic speech. There is also the small matter of being all of two months removed from a massacre in which religious reactionaries murdered people for what they perceived as “weaponized” speech against their prophet. Islamic violence makes the traditional liberal view on free expression look like the best place to fight from for most people.
Feminist need to carefully articulate threatening speech as threats, threats demonstrably linked to a pattern of violence, rather than with vague notions of silencing, offense, hurtfulness, etc. However well-intentioned that is not going to play outside like-minded political circles.
Katherine Woo:
I see no such jump, there.
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“Volkh is correct in his analysis of their Constitutional rights”, you claim, but that is not what quixote is about*.
This makes sense to me:
This also does, but it’s about something different:
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* Not feminism, specifically.
/*Bit embarrassed. But tickled about the amplification!*/
KWoo: we seem to be talking past each other. I don’t understand your points and I’m not sure you understand mine. And I really don’t understand the idea that viciousness has to be feasible and intended according to the perpetrator of hate speech for there to be a problem. You do realize that when the spotlight hits them they’ll always say, “Oh, it was just a joke,” “Oh, I didn’t mean it,” “Oh lighten up”?
That standard is only ever applied when the less-socially-powerful are targets. If some 14 year-old tweets a bad joke about being a terrorist on an aircraft, then the fact that she was joking and had no way of carrying out any violence is irrelevant. Airplane passengers are important enough that 14 year-olds don’t get to tell them to lighten up.
Bigoted drunken chants
Bigoted drunken chants may also turn to group violence in an instant if the chanters are a group of authoritarian followers and there is a charismatic authoritarian in charge who decides to turn chanting->rioting or chanting->vandalism or chanting->lynch mob.
That’s why chanting is threatening; it’s human threat display.
“That’s why chanting is threatening; it’s human threat display.”
An excuse frequently used by police to justify attacking peaceful protesters. Fuck pre-crime.
Abuse of police power is not the same topic as free speech. Yes, abuse of police power is bad and has to be stopped.
Abusive speech and threats are not a pre-crime. They are a crime. It’s right there in the law. It’s just differentially enforced depending on what the people with power care about.