Kent Greenfield, a law professor at Boston College, says if the First Amendment protects the racist chants of members of the Oklahoma chapter of the SAE fraternity, then “[he] dissents.”
“The chant was a spew of hatred, a promise to discriminate, a celebration of privilege, and an assertion of the right to violence–all wrapped up in a catchy ditty. If the First Amendment has become so bloated, so ham-fisted, that it cannot distinguish between such filth and earnest public debate about race, then it is time we rethink what it means,” he writes.
Appearing to draw upon facets of Critical Race Theory, Greenfield says that the way we interpret free speech today “forces the most marginalized among us to bear the costs of the bigots’ speech.”
From The Atlantic:
No one with a frontal lobe would mistake this drunken anthem for part of an uninhibited and robust debate about race relations. The chant was a spew of hatred, a promise to discriminate, a celebration of privilege, and an assertion of the right to violence–all wrapped up in a catchy ditty. If the First Amendment has become so bloated, so ham-fisted, that it cannot distinguish between such filth and earnest public debate about race, then it is time we rethink what it means.
… Counterspeech is exhausting and distracting, but if you are the target of hatred you have little choice. “Speak up! Remind us why you should not be lynched.” “Speak up! Remind us why you should not be raped.” You can stay silent, but that internalizes the taunt. The First Amendment tells us the government cannot force us either to remain silent or to speak, but its reliance on counterspeech effectively forces that very choice onto victims of hate speech.
Yet is the slippery slope so slick that we cannot fathom any restrictions on the worst speech? Is the slope so steep that we cannot recognize the harms flowing from assertions of privileged hatred subjecting whole populations to fear of violence? Does it really risk tyranny to expel a couple of racist punks?
Professor Greenfield may not think so, but to that last line I offer this quote:
You know, there are some words I’ve known since I was a schoolboy: “With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.”
Though the words come from a fictitious character (yes, I’m a big fan) , the warning is anything but.
In addition, favoring a constriction of rights seems a bit odd for a professor who in the past defended the right of polygamous and incestuous marriages.
h/t to John Podhoretz.
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