We have the right to free speech…right? Wrong.
Drudge is reporting that a 19 year old woman was charged with “ridicule on account of race, creed or color” in addition to breaching the peace for calling a Taco Bell employee a racial epithet.
Now I have no problem with the second charge–if she did what she is being accuse of, she did indeed breach the peace. But how is it that ridicule is a chargable offense, let alone ridicule on the basis of race, color, or creed?
Besides, who defines when it is a racial epithet anyway? Riding the bus the other day, there was a group of three black students and one white student, all of whom were members of a gang. They talked a lot about the various Crips and the Bloods and the Mexican Mafia, and they all dropped the “N” word about each other quite liberally throughout their talk.
Now let’s put this in perspective. If these black youths were not being racist in refering to themselves by the “N” word, why would it be racist for someone like me to do so? The action is identical in both cases, but somehow there’s an added attachment of racism to my use of the term that is not applied to them. How is this possible?
The only possible way one could make an argument that my use of the term is racist would be if you argued that my intent in using the word was racist. The intent of these black youths was not racist because they presumably do not view themselves racistly.
There’s only one problem with that. The law is not written to judge intent, it is written to judge actions.
This specific case about the Taco Bell incident also demonstrates yet another problem: there is no more free speech. Certain words are deemed “insensitive” and then criminalized. That’s right, these words are now illegal to use. But who defines what words are “insensitive”? If it was the black youths on the bus, the “N” word would not be insensitive…unless a white person used it (which to me seems a racist application of the rules of “insensitivity”).
What if we decided that the word “the” was insensitive? We could outlaw the usage of that word! And make no mistake, outlawing the use of the word “the” is just as arbitrary as outlawing the use of any other word.
People ought to have the right to make a fool of themselves. If they are racists, they have a right to their views. Just as we have a right to tell them they are stupid for their views. We ought not ever criminalize words, no matter what the intention, because that is just another way to criminalize thought. And when the rules change so that your thoughts are declared criminal, where do you go then?
