the problem with "hate speech"
If I were to walk into a Black Christian church on a Sunday morning and yell at its members, "I fucking hate you niggers!" most people would agree that I'd engaged in racist hate speech. I would never do this, of course
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Partly then also - how do they say it?
- You know, you can say things in a tiptoeing way, trying not to actively hurt someone by saying something that will or might be uncomfortable to that person but has to be spoken out loud.
But you can also be brazen and loud, without any tact - classic "in your face"-type of way -, and then it's no miracle that recipient is quite pissed at you or misinterprets you, suspecting you of certain intentions that you actually may not harbor.
So to say... the measurement for hate speech to me is: Trying to look into someone's brain, behind their skull. Finding out how someone meant something. What they had in mind behind their words.
(To get to a realistic and sober result in that, you've always got to get yourself quite a chunk of information from the sidelines...)
...Ah, and in general I tend to not think in this quite new category called "hate speech".
Hate expressed in whatever way existed even before coining that term, but people started caring this much as they do now only recently - as everyone started and was capable to paper their virtual walls for everyone to see and read freely.
People had these viewpoints before, they only weren't written in their faces. So what is the big deal now? - Realizing no-one is able to control what a person thinks and what personal inner image of the world it lives in (even if it seems "unethical")?
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