Horton Hears a Ho: Don Imus and President Clinton

Since the time I began writing in this blog I've intended to quote a passage from one of President W. J. Clinton's speeches, which was delivered in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Now, that the outrage caused by anti-Semitic remarks in a national newspaper has largely and sadly blown over, that virtually no one remembers why Don Imus was fired about a year ago, I think this excerpt is more topical than ever. It deals with free speech. And hate speech.

The borderline between instances of hate speech and free speech has never been fixed, nor is it ever going to be. This is because it is situated between one person's right to free speech and the other person's right to, generally, the pursuit of happiness, and specifically, to the right of a liveable, hate-free environment. As these rights are of equal strength, neither can overrule the other: they conflict and the line that separates them wiggles to and fro according to law, custom, and judiciary practice.

The most interesting thing in President Clinton's (but don't fool ourselves, it was probably one of his speechwriter's) argument is that it re-embraces the notion of hate speech (the speech itself refers to reckless speech) -- in spite of the fact that ruling it out infringes upon freedom of speech -- but it does so based not on the effect hate speech has on its victim.

Words have consequences. To pretend that they do not is idle. [...] Are you here in this great university because you think the words you stay up late at night reading, studying, have no consequence? Of course not.

It punches the greatest hole into anti-anti-hate-speech arguments which claim that words do not harm because they do not matter. Putting aside all the historical and sociological considerations arguing that pre-WWII anti-Semitism resulted from a deliberately designed discourse, the fact still remains that we do care about words. In Western societies, language is pretty much all we care about. Language perpetuates the fabric of societies; we consume and generate, apart from the relatively small quantities of food, language; language and information. It does matter what is being said -- and the practices and pretensions of those who try to hide behind denial and claim that the things they say hurting a number of people do not matter in the end should be exposed: of course they believe what they say matters. They wouldn't say whatever they do if they didn't.

Even though making one's voice heard is not easy, it must be realized that saying things changes the world we live in. Not because that magical "performative" quality of language that has probably never existed, but because what we perceive of the world is largely defined by what we communicate and what is communicated to us. Therefore one must assume responsibility for what one says. It is a heavy one, but it's worth bearing.

Because it matters. Say something today.