the problem with "hate speech"

[kanzeon_2040]

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

Comments

[howlin_wolf_66]

If you mean the problem is that there's no single 'catch-all' answer to each of these questions, then... sure? Each situation is complex and needs discussing on its own merits.

[kanzeon_2040]

But the problem is that merely discussing hate speech is viewed by some people as hate speech. Because you can't discuss hate speech without using examples of what is or is not hate speech. People have been fired, from the New York Times for example, merely for discussing whether something should be hate speech or not.

[howlin_wolf_66]

Yeah, well those people are extremists; one should strive at all times not to deliberately upset people, but also not to cater to the fringe

[matrixmann]

Hm... A measurement that I tend to use to sort peoples' words and actions is: What is their intention? What is their specific base intention behind all their words and how they say it?
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