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Freedom Of Speech

Decent Essays

Throughout history, humans have casually turned words into predators, while making prey out of those it applies to. Our casual blindness of others disparities often allow certain discriminatory words to prevail and be empowered. Derogatory terms such as retard, gay, fag, etc have played a significant role in the dehumanization and victimization of marginalized people. On the topic of the R word, in the Washington Post published article “A Movie, a Word, and My Family’s Battle, Patricia E. Bauer argues that the word should be banned as a whole because of the hurtful and discriminatory undertones it promotes. In contrast, in the Washington Post published essay, “The case against banning the word retard,” Christopher M. Fairman claims that banning the R word would, in fact, be stripping Americans of their first amendment right. Freedom of speech is debatably the greatest American value, thus prohibiting the word would restrain us of what America stands for. Even though most of what Bauer writes about is genuinely true, I do not agree with the R word being utterly banned due to freedom of speech, potential lack of discussion amongst the word, and erasing the word's actual meaning. Instead, it should be reclaimed by those affected by it in order to put the power in the rightful hands.
There is a very thin and ephemeral line between freedom of speech and hate speech. This line can be crossed in an instant due to how controversial it is. Censorship to a certain extent often

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