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Hate Speech Essay

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Hatespeech

Hate Speech and the People who use it

Hate speech; is this the type of speech that the First Amendment protects? Should this type of speech be defended? If this type of speech is censored on college campuses, have the students lost their right to the First Amendment? What kind of damage does hate speech cause physical and emotional? Who does hate speech affect?

Is hate speech protected by the first amendment? According to Charles R.
Lawrence III, it is not. “When racist speech takes the form of face-to-face insults, catcalls, or other assaultive speech aimed at an individual or small group of persons, it falls directly within the “fighting words” exception to First Amendment protection.”(Goshgarian 382)

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According to Nat Hentoff, if we allow censorship on the college campuses the rights of the students have been taken away. Hentoff gives us examples of colleges that have censorship on campus but these campuses have taken the extremist route. They do not allow the teachers to teach the students what hate speech is and what they can do to protect themselves. I believe that censorship of hate speech is necessary to a certain extent, for example hate speech that is violent toward others should be censored because if it is not that we are denying the students that the hate speech is directed toward an equal opportunity to an education. If the students are afraid to go to school that what good is school?

What kind of damage does hate speech cause physical and emotional? The physical damage is very apparent when the hate speech turns into the hate crime. When a cross is burned in someone front yard, or when walking down a street a person is assaulted because he/she is from a different race, religion, gender, or because of their sexual preference.

The emotional damage that is inflicted upon a person of a hate speech is very harmful. “Some of these students came to college as a means of escaping a life dominated by race-based discrimination but found an environment more hostile than they had expected.” (Marcus 147). If our students do not feel safe while at school they will not attend school, if the number of educated people go down at a

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