Decompiling Oppression #16
Sam McVeety
Let's talk about freedom of speech. A friend and I (two white cisgender men) were discussing the evolving dialogue around racial justice, and thinking about what space there should (or shouldn't) be for speech that denies the need for racial justice. It's a common question, particularly in a country that places such pride in its First Amendment. Speech is a complex, historically rich topic, and in order to talk about the present, I think it's important that we first better understand the past.
One of the assumptions that I used to have about speech is a liberal, rationalist one -- that speech is the great equalizer, capable of moving society forward in a singular way. If only the right argument came around, said with the right words, in the right way, then we could collectively progress to a more rational, enlightened society. My history education inundated me with examples to support this belief, picking out some of the greatest speakers of the English language along the way. No less than Barack Obama was elected president (twice!) in my lifetime, with his indisputable gifts for oratory.
What this obscured, though, was everything that had to happen for me to be able to hear that speech. What I didn't internalize was the many ways that free speech has historically failed as a tool for good. In Images of the Outsider in American Law and Culture, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic provide both an extensive historical record of these failures (were sound legal arguments enough to stop Japanese internment?), as well as an indictment of the underlying social factors that prevent us from seeing them. They hold that free speech has many narrow uses in resolving conventional, mechanical disputes (e.g. contract resolution), but that:
Speech is less able, however, to deal with systemic social ills, such as racism or sexism, that are widespread and deeply woven into the fabric of society. Free speech, in short, is least helpful where we need it most.
Similar to our discussion of viewing our place in the past with moral clarity, Delgado and Stefancic observe the historical pattern that we (members of majority/dominant groups) are easily able to condemn racism in our past (slavery, segregation), but rarely able to fully recognize it in our present (police violence, especially prior to this summer). They explain this as a function of the ways that racism in the present is viewed as "common sense" in dominant culture. How does this relate to speech? It makes us unable to hear it.
Not only are these portrayals (e.g. of racial minorities as dangerous, uneducated, criminal) so ubiquitous that they become unconscious "truths", but they also rob dissenting voices of their legitimacy, because listeners are disinclined to believe someone whom they are already prejudiced against. This further marginalizes the groups in question, as it means that the historical record often recognizes others (usually whites) who spoke on behalf of causes (e.g. William Lloyd Garrison on abolition), perpetuating the idea that subordinated groups are unable to speak for themselves. They did; we just didn't listen. None other than Thomas Jefferson "wished Congress could speak half as well as orators of Indian nations", and yet speech was not sufficient to prevent land seizure and genocide.
Fundamentally, free speech often has little meaning without being accompanied by power. For any of the above examples, counterstories existed at the time, but were ignored or greeted with outright hostility by dominant social interests. Delgado and Stefancic remind us that it took decades to acknowledge the works of authors like Zora Neale Hurston, yet we celebrate them in a way that erases how truly late we are in doing so.
Ultimately, it's critical to realize that Delgado and Stefancic are not speaking against speech as a liberatory tool, but are contesting the perception that it is a sufficient tool on its own. They suggest four corrective techniques: (1) that we respond strongly (rather than tentatively) to visible racism today, because there is almost certainly a huge amount that goes unseen (2) basing our remedies (reparations, affirmative action) on our understanding of the past, because we are frequently unable to accurately assess the present (3) elevating, amplifying, and giving power to subordinated voices and (4) remaining skeptical of speech as a cure-all for inequity. We focused largely on (4) today, and will return to these other harms and remedies in the future.
With that in mind, here are this week's invitations:
Personal: What invisible stereotypes or unconscious biases might you hold that prevent you from listening to speech against racism today? From people who are incarcerated? From people who have been criminalized?
Communal: Imagine the world in thirty years. What will they say "how could they" about us, with regard to things that many people do not consider to be racist today? Delgado and Stefancic provide a helpful list of candidates.
Solidarity: Support Creative Justice, an arts-based alternative to incarceration for young people in King County.
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