First, what this thread is NOT about:
It’s not about whether a particular word is hate speech. I’m not interest in (yet another) discussion about how “nigger” is but “white trash” isn’t without any more context than that. Or whether “fundie” is or isn’t. And it’s not about SDMB policy, which would force it into the Pit, where “discussion regarding administration of the SDMB” is supposed to take place. So please, no debate about whether our board should or should not allow hate speech. And finally, it’s not about whether there is such a thing as “hate speech”. Let’s just stipulate that there is, and that the board policy to disallow it is wise and reasonable. For the sake of this discussion, those particular things don’t matter.
So, here’s what the thread IS about:
I want to talk about the underlying theory of how you determine what hate speech is. If it’s like obscenity — something ineffable but recognizable (we know it when we see it) — then what are its attributes that tip you off? Would it be targeting a specific racial or ethnic group? If so, and if there is little more to it than that, then why is it called such a broad name as “hate speech” when it means specifically “speech that is hateful of particular racial or ethnic groups”?
If a person hates atheists, and calls them pejoratives, is he engaging in hate speech? What about if he hates Christians? What about Jews? If you differentiate between ethnic Jews and religious Jews, does hate speech apply only to the ethnic Jew but not the religious Jew who is not an ethnic Jew? What about people who really do hate people of another religion or of no religion? When they speak in slurs about their targets, is their speech merely offensive but not hateful?
If we can’t define what hate speech is (and if you can, please do), then can we define the demarcation between offensive and hateful? Clearly, speech can be offensive based solely on the sensibilities of the hearer. References to faith as belief in sky pixies offends me, but I don’t get a sense of hate from it. I suppose I would if the speaker had made clear his hatred of me, but then if that were the case, I would get a sense of hatred from every word he uttered.
So, I’m going to take a stab at this, at least to get it going. Perhaps there is a certain trigger factor to hate speech that unveils a violent intention. “Nigger”, for example, has a long history associated with it of its utterence being followed by violence. It has long been what a racist might have shouted as he and his posse chased a black man through the woods for looking the wrong way at a white woman.
But clearly, there is a lot more to it than that. The same posse, running through the woods shouting “Pedophile!” might not likely be branded as hate speakers. That might be because it is a nearly universally hated group, so that nobody cares about them. Or is it because it’s not an ethnic group? Well, I’m not sure we can say that because there are groups that are not ethnic groups that have also suffered longstanding bigotry. The posse shouting “Faggot!” is targeting a group, but not an ethnic group. And I don’t think anyone would disagree that if “nigger” is hate speech in that sense then so is “faggot”.
But what if the posse were shouting “Fundie!”. That might actually bring a laugh because, in the United States at least, fundamentalist Christians have not really been the targets of violence even though they clearly are the target of at least some bigotry. But what if it’s “Muslim!” instead. Even though the history isn’t as long as the history for “nigger” (or even “faggot”), there is certainly some amount of violent bigotry that these days is aimed at people fo the Muslim faith. Are we to give the speech a pass as merely offensive but not hateful on account of Islam not defining a racial or ethnic group?
Which brings us to another aspect — namely, if the definition is to be extended to groups beyond ethnic and racial groups, then which ones? What if the posse, for example, is screaming “Abortionist!” Surely, no one will deny that abortion doctors and clinics have been the targets of violence. So why don’t we see the word “abortionist” in most list of words that are nominees for hate speech?
And that brings us to the final aspect that I intend to deal with for now, and that’s whether it matters that the targeted group is in its group voluntarily. In other words, I’ve seen the argument that certain terms are not hate speech because the people they target have chosen a lifestyle — meaning, I guess, that the word targets the lifestyle and not the person. For example, if only the person would move out of the trailer park or the mountain shack, he would no longer be “white trash”. Then again, maybe it has nothing to do with trailers and abject poverty. Maybe a person of good character who of necessity must use his Appalachian outhouse is not “white trash” after all.
But if that’s the case, then hate speech isn’t about groups at all, but about individuals. It’s very hard to know by the above reasoning whether calling Ebeneezer “white trash” is hate speech until we look very closely at Ebeneezer and his family to determine what their character is. And how do we even do that? Do we administer tests of morality? If so, who decides what’s moral and what isn’t?
So, I’m not intersted in some declaration that “nigger” is hatespeech but “white trash” isn’t or vice-versa or both or neither. I’m interested in your thought process that brought to you one position or the other. My hope is that we can compare thought processes and, with enough participation, look through the processes and determine who includes X but not Y in their consideration. Who includes Y but not X? And so on. I’m interested in whether ethnicity, for example, is required, optional, or excluded from your consideration in determining that what you have seen is or isn’t hate speech.
You know it when you see it? Fine. What is it that you see?