Students discuss hate speech and First Amendment

Nicole Stone/Assistant News Director

Under the First Amendment, the rights of all Americans to express their thoughts are protected, even if the nature of those thoughts are discriminatory or hateful. In a poll conducted by Student Media on Twitter asking followers about their feelings towards the protection of prejudiced speech, 95 percent agreed as of press time that the right to speak should be awarded to everyone, despite the nature of their words.

For Billy Yeung, a freshman accounting major, his support of free speech relies heavily on context.

“If you go to a rally and deliberately break down a monument or attack a certain group, that’s obviously hate. Or, you can be at a stand-up show and listen to a comedian who’s just talking about a scenario. It’s obviously all about context,” Yeung said.

Renee Girard, an FIU alumni who earned her degree in psychology felt somewhat conflicted in her support of the First Amendment as it stands currently.

“Here’s my dilemma,” Girard said. “People have a responsibility in what they say and how they behave, and there’s a degree to which it’s detrimental to the people around them… there’s different value systems, there’s different degrees of speech that can be harmful or helpful.”

Girard, however, feels that the First Amendment should be limited to exclude speech that is harmful. She feels that anything that dehumanizes a person should be considered psychological and verbal abuse and therefore not be condoned as a freedom.

“If language becomes classified as abuse, I think that the government shouldn’t give that freedom [of speech,]” Girard said.

Maria Hernandez, an accounting major and sophomore believes that despite the protection of discriminatory and hateful speech under the First Amendment, the First Amendment is a needed protection.

“Whether or not the words are hateful or not should be a decision of the people,” she said.

Hernandez’s sentiments of the First Amendments echoed Girard’s in terms of a limited freedom of speech when it comes to words that are of a discriminatory nature.

“There are limits in the work [space] where you cannot be discriminated against [such as] certain things like maybe your religion, or even your gender. Those laws exist for a reason,” Hernandez said.

Much like Yeung’s point of view that context is part of the picture when it comes to what is said, Hernandez also mentioned that context draws the line between hate speech and an opinion.

“In terms of being discriminatory, the same goes for words… discriminatory behavior would include hateful words, that’s what I mean by a limit. In what context are they being used, not just said?” Hernandez said.

As of press time, 69 percent of participants in the survey rejected the idea that discriminatory words should be protected whereas 55 percent concluded the same should be done for hateful speech. According to the American Bar Association, a voluntary professional association composed of lawyers and law students, hate speech is regarded as any speech that “offends, threatens, or insults groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other traits.”

“It is a very complicated topic. As I said, it should be a moral law between people and it starts at home in how we educate our kids,” Hernandez said.