I have a complicated relationship with freedom of expression. I’m not an idiot. I understand the value of free speech. However, I look around and see hate speech rampant in our society. I came to this class with the question,
“Is there a way to protect our people from hate speech and misinformation without sacrificing free speech?”
Words matter. We saw that on January 6th when the words “six million wasn’t enough” were printed on T-shirts. These words were used as a tool of hate to assert the idea that the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust weren’t enough. Those words matter. Words can inspire violence, but they can also inspire love. The words “Black Lives Matter” inspired millions of people across nations to critically consider the treatment of black people and acknowledge the systemic racism still present in society.
The First Amendment has been used to protect and perpetuate hateful acts for decades. In the 1977 case, National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, the Supreme Court moved to uphold the First Amendment, even in the most extreme circumstances. A neo-Nazi group intended to hold a “power demonstration” in Skokie village, a community comprised of almost 50% Jewish people and hundreds of Holocaust survivors. Regardless of the clear hateful intent of this demonstration, the Supreme Court ruled that the neo-Nazi group had a right to demonstrate under the First Amendment.
But what were to happen if we started regulating speech? In a fairyland, I imagine that hate speech disappears, everyone feels safe to exist in the world as they are, and the information on the internet is all true.
But is that realistic of the world we live in?
The regulation of speech in the hands of officials who benefit from a system of sexism and racism would quickly turn into the silencing of women and people of color who dare to speak out about injustice.
Interestingly, free speech wasn’t always a vehicle of hate and oppression. For example, in ancient Greece, two concepts expressed freedom of expression, parrhesia and isegoria. Although they both can be directly translated as “freedom of speech,” they have vastly different meanings.
“Whereas isegoria was fundamentally about equality, then parrhesia
was about liberty.” – TERESA M. BEJAN
Isegoria asserted the idea that all people have a right to speak, regardless of class or background, an idea that was not common during this time. Parrhesia expressed that one should have a right to say everything in their mind. Giving everyone the ability to say what they want, when they want to, regardless of who it offends. This is closer to the interpretation of free speech that we see today.
The value of free expression is both public and personal. We see the public value of free expression in peoples’ Instagram bios when they include #BLM, #antivax, 🏳️🌈, or #patriot. All of these mean something in society about who we are and how we relate to other people.
Free expression is a crucial tenant of our public and personal identity. In Can the Subaltern Speak by Gayatri Spivak, she explains the erasure of non-Western cultures at the hands of Western investigators due to the lack of expression given to other cultures during this process. Our ability to communicate who we are to other people is contingent on free speech and expression. Although our personal identity remains the same if it is correctly perceived by society, we cannot successfully exist in the world as we are without accurate public identity.
The concept of free speech and expression is worth protecting. Although the First Amendment has been used to defend hateful acts, it has also been used to protect marginalized people who speak out against oppression, such as women and people of color. Freedom of speech protects the female sex from further oppression by the patriarchy. While we uphold this freedom, we must find a way to shift society so that the fruits of free expression reflect the tenants of equality and freedom that it was founded on instead of hate and violence.
Bejan explains it best when she wrote, “Denying hateful or historically privileged voices a platform is necessary to make the equal right to free speech effective, so that the most marginalized and precarious members of society can finally speak up–and be heard.”
Kadison Cole 