David Shih

[Commentary] Racist hate speech on campus has become the de facto litmus test for free speech protections today. But racist hate speech may not be doing what progressive free speech defenders think it is doing.

There is a familiar metaphor used to frame free speech debates — the so-called "marketplace of ideas." Censorship is not the answer, the story goes, but more speech — better speech — is the proper response to racist hate speech. Critiques of the metaphor as it applies to free speech debates are almost as old as the metaphor itself, and a recent one contextualizes it in light of recent campus speech clashes. To these, I add the question of whether we are so sure that the rhetoric of common humanity and rights for all races will prevail. What if it doesn't, at least not anytime soon? It might mean that racist hate speech is not a "necessary evil" that jumpstarts racial justice within a liberal marketplace but is — for the foreseeable future — nothing more than state-sanctioned injury of people of color.

[David Shih is an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.]