Australian Racial Vilification Law

The voice of writers and authors are the key components to their inner thoughts. It is a way of actually portraying what a person is trying to say. However the case is that their words silenced and put in period of exile away from the eyes of the public. Author Charles Lawrence goes on to state that racist speech is wrong simply because of the drastic agony it puts on a victim’s perspective. In the article “On Racist Speech,” the author, Charles R Lawrence III, effectively establishes credibility, logic and emotional themes to supports his argument which infers that the use of harmful language should not be protected by the First Amendment Law in order to stop racism.

Hate speech is defined as “speech intended to degrade, intimidate, or incite violence or prejudicial action against someone based on his or her race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.” There has been a controversial issue regarding hate speech and the laws that prohibit it. The right to freedom of expression reassures each person the right to express themselves in ideas and opinions without the government's interference. Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment and should not be expressed towards others because it causes harm. In this essay I will talk about the effects harmful hate speech caused to others and to the groups treated as insignificant. I will also discuss how hate speech cannot

Freedom of speech is a glorious thing and a privileges of living in the United States of America is being able to express one’s opinion. Segments of society are making an effort to stifle people’s opinions to do what is politically correct. Can people’s ideas of protection be too extreme? In the article, “The Coddling of the American Mind”, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue that there is a negative outcome when rules are given to stop people from being offended, and this statement is supported from real life examples, analogies, and reliable sources.

This week’s article “Situating Legal Consciousness: Experiences and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens about Law and Street Harassment” by Laura Nielsen studies people’s attitudes towards the regulation of offensive public speech by race, gender and class and the reasoning behind their attitudes. Nielsen introduces the idea of legal consciousness, which reflects on the unique backgrounds within these disadvantaged groups and how it affects their understanding and importance of law (RELATION?). This study found that the majority was against legal regulation of offensive public speech based on the assumption that they can handle these situations on their own, similar to the idea of in house dispute resolution offices in which these situations are

George Orwell once famously said ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.' This sentence sums up the very essence of free speech; it is, as Orwell believed, the mother of all civil rights. Without the unconditional freedom to offend it cannot exist. Ideas are, more often than not, dangerous things. There is little point in having freedom of speech if it only defends the most popular and innocuous of opinions. The freedom to offend can perpetrate racial, social or religious intolerance; however, conversely, it is also the only means available to fight against such bigotry. Free speech is not something to work towards when the world is ‘better'; it is, rather, the vital tool through

The three different categories of microaggressions are judged based on what is used to insinuate a negative or racist message toward a minority. Microassault is defined as “…an explicit racial derogation characterized primarily by a verbal attack meant to hurt the intended victim through name calling, avoidant behavior, or purposeful discriminatory actions”, while microinsults as “…communications that convey rudeness and insensitivity and demean a person’s racial heritage or identity”, and, finally, microinvalidations as “…communications that exclude negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts feelings, or experiential reality of a person of color” (Sue 274). Clear definitions have let the general public be aware of how microaggressions

The landmark case speaks “directly to the psychic injury inflicted by racist speech by noting that the symbolic message of defeatism affected the hearts and minds” of the students (Lawrence 2088). The message still emerges in today’s society through the racial comments on minorities. The harassment and demeaning towards the minority students because of their difference in culture and race is inhumane. They deserve to be able to attend school without fearing that they might be a perpetrator's next target of racially assaulting speech. The racial slurs and “harassment often causes deep emotional scarring and feelings of anxiety and fear” that filters through the victim's life (Lawrence 2088). People need to acknowledge that “there is real harm inflicted by racist speech and that this harm is far from trivial” (Lawrence 2087). By accepting Lawrence’s argument that the regulation of racist speech can alleviate the damages done to minorities, there will be a positive outcome regarding the mental health of minorities. The benefits of regulating assaultive racist speech is the diminishment of negative psychological thoughts of the minorities. Racist speech causes the minorities to think negatively about themselves since the perpetrator emphasizes that being a minority means that they are inferior, which increases the chance of the minorities clouding themselves with

In this paper I will analyze the arguments presented in Caroline West’s article, “Words That Silence? Freedom of Express and Racist Hate Speech.” Here West probes what is meant by free speech and in so doing, identifies three dimensions of speech from which the value of free speech derives. These are production and distribution, comprehension, and consideration. Her major premise is that absent requirements of comprehension or consideration, free speech lacks the value it is generally accorded. West argues that allowing the production and distribution of racist hate speech has a silencing effect on, not only the production and distribution of speech by racial minorities, but the comprehension and consideration of their speech as well. She concludes that this silencing may have a net effect of diminishing free speech.

The article I decided to analyze was written by PhD candidate Jo Morgan, titled “US hate crime legislation: a legal model to avoid in Australia.” It is plainly stated in the abstract section of this paper, that the Author, examines the the barriers to achieving hate crime victim status. This is a much more complex issue than the typical white on black hate crime. The intent of Jo is to showcase that there are groups of people who are the direct victims of hate crime, but that the American judicial system (that he feels Australia is likely to emulate) doesn't adequately protect people. Throughout his paper, especially in the first half,

Hate speech is a term of art in legal and political theory that is used to refer to verbal conduct – and other symbolic, communicative action –which willfully attacks a person or group based on attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, or gender. Hate speech thus includes things like identity-prejudicial abuse and harassment, certain uses of slurs and epithets, some extremist political and religious speech. For example, statements to the effect that all Muslims are terrorists, or that gay people are second -class human beings, and certain displays of hate symbols like swastikas or burning crosses are part of it. Those such activities are classified as hate speech if, and insofar as, they convey the idea that belonging to a particular social group warrants someone’s being held in or treated with contempt. However, Freedom of speech is the most important and basic right that a human in every country deserves. Freedom of speech and hate speech are two opposite things. Therefore, the government needs to draw a line between hate speech and freedom of speech to protect a citizen. Hate speech should be banned and extreme speech regulated because it is one of the reasons for many negative consequences in human lives

As hate crimes have risen in number during the past five years; many state governments have attempted to prevent such crimes by passing laws called bias laws. These laws make a crime that is motivated by hatred based on the victim’s race, religion, ethnic background, or sexual orientation a more serious crime than such an act would ordinarily be. Many people believe that these laws violate the criminal’s freedom of speech. Many hate group members say that freedom of speech is the right to say or write or publish one’s thoughts, or to express one’s self, they also say that this right is guaranteed to all Americans. But people and organizations who are against these hate groups ask themselves if the first amendment include and protect all form of expression, even those that ugly or hurtful like the burning crosses. The Supreme Court Justices have decided that some kinds of speech are not protected by the Constitution,

Before 1975 there were innumerable instances of vilification, almost applauded. Singh is convinced that freedom of speech must be regulated, publicizing that “people have a right to have freedom from racial vilification” and that anything which dissimilar to this fundamental entitlement is an “unacceptable and wrong” substitute (Blacktown Sun, 2015). Ironically, the fact that Brandis and his supporters believes the law diminishes freedom of expression and speech, where people cannot “say what they like”, is dismissed by the provisions enlisted under Section18D of the Racial Discrimination Act. As newly appointed Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane argues, “often it is forgotten that the fundamental value of free speech is explicitly protected by

Perhaps the most concerning outcome of the Brandis reform would be the entrenchment of the change in social perceptions in regards to social tolerance. As the esteemed social justice magazine Peril Inc. reported, “any watering down or perceived dilution of the Racial Discrimination Act would send the wrong message to potential offenders that hate speech was becoming more acceptable in our society…”. As recorded in Victoria, where there is an exponentially growing multicultural population, many ethnic groups have become increasingly disheartened with Brandis’ proposed reforms (Peril Magazine Inc, 2014). Comparatively, establishing similar ground was a Conversation media article which boldly asserted that the removal of provisions would increase vilification on the internet. In 2013 alone, internet vilification accounted for

Hate Crimes against African Americans in the United States has been commonplace since slavery. Prejudice against minority groups continues to present day where hate crime laws have worked to limit the incidence of crimes of hate. However, within certain regions of the United States, compliance with hate crime regulations can promote the use of hate crimes through the lack of prosecution (King 2007).

Speech that attacks a person or group of people on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation is regarded as hateful. It has the potential to incite violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected group of people. In Millian Principles, Freedom of Expression, and Hate Speech, Mill makes the claim that essentially all speech, including hate speech, should be allowed. This claim holds its validity as long as no harm is done to an individual. Here, I will show that low value speech fails to engage deliberative views that underlie central first amendment fundamental liberties. Subsequently, I will support these claims by comparing the aspects of hate speech to low value speech. Lastly, I advocate for the prohibition against the use of hate speech in a university setting.