No, it’s not an attack, it’s an insult. And it isn’t very pleasant to be on the receiving end of one, and this group picked a particularly reviling one to use to satisfy some base need to be cruel, but insults just aren’t the kind of injury the law intervenes to protect people from. And sister, if namecalling is an attack in your world, thank your lucky stars, because plenty of people have it much worse.
Nor do we require political expression to be especially persuasive, presentable, or even well thought-out. One’s man vulgarity is another man’s lyric, as Harlan, J., noted in Cohen v. California, which overturned a conviction for disturbing the peace of Cohen, who was caught wearing a jacket emblazoned with “Fuck the Draft” in a Los Angeles courthouse. This isn’t a particularly cogent argument either, but it’s political nature is unmistakable. As it is in an expression of racial rancor. We all know what “Fuck Whitey” means; it’s a statement of exasperation with the slow progress of racial minorities in America and a call to do something about it. It is fatuousness, or worse intellectual dishonesty, to pretend a dual to that call doesn’t exist for white supremacists.
It is an exceptionally distasteful view. But I suppose I just have enough confidence in my side to believe we don’t need to ride roughshod over the First Amendment in order for my side—opposition to racial strife and division—to prevail. Indeed, I actually hold the quaint idea that striving for racial harmony and reconciliation is the majority view and the innate hope of the great many good-hearted people of America.
If so, then nobody should ever get prosecuted or otherwise punished for anything less than murder. What the hell is with the black and white view?
Look, this is all just hairsplitting. You yourself made an exception for disorderly conduct, and whether or not calling someone nigger constitutes an assault, it most certainly is disorderly conduct.
It’s called “context” Bricker. What would a reasonable person think who wandered into that meeting to be confronted by
This was not a random insult on the street.
note also that the man calling out “nigger” was not arrested or convicted. He was asked to leave the premises for causing a disturbance. Hardly the same thing.
Excellent point! In context, uttered contemporaneously with remarks about the President and various socioeconomic systems, the offensive epithet’s political nature is plainly revealed, and therefore its use is well protected by long settled First Amendment jurisprudence as core political speech.
It seems to me that Translucent Daydream’s primary responsibility was preventing a fight, seeing as how if you have a crowd of people who start yelling racial slurs at another group in the same room, it’s probably going to get ugly.
Not quite. The people who wandered into the meeting by mistake did not hear “remarks about the President and various socioeconomic systems” etc… and what had transpired before their arrival. What they heard was:
In this context, the man with the microphone was using words that were potentially an incitement to riot, and was thus committing a disturbance. He was inflaming a situation (that being, black people mistakenly coming into the room), and inciting a potentially hostile situation with his words.
Because the group was then causing a disturbance, they were asked to leave. They were not asked to leave at other meetings (when they were presumably also espousing noxious views) because they were not causing a disturbance then.