Is banning hurtful language: should offensive expressions be prohibited? No

Imagine you're an American citizen whose incisive comments about racial injustice have enraged a hostile public. I don't mean that folks arc merely complaining about you on talk radio or firing off angry letters to the editor. I mean they're threatening to do you bodily harm. Pundits and public figures are calling for your scalp--and worse. Then someone writes an editorial suggesting that the "Black wretch who had written that foul lie should be tied to a stake at the corner of Main and Madison Streets, a pair of tailor's shears used on him, and he should then be burned at the stake."

What I've asked you to imagine was cold, hard reality for Ida B. Wells, the crusading Black writer and activist whose investigations of lynchings nearly led to her death on more than one occasion. Following an 1892 editorial calling for her mutilation and murder, an angry mob stormed her newspaper office in Memphis, Tenn., destroyed her printing press and set the building on fire. They swore that Wells and her co-editor would be lynched if they were ever seen in town again.

The name of Wells' newspaper? Free Speech. It seems appropriate to remember her example and her publication during these contentious times, when the right to free speech is once again under the microscope. Partisans on both sides of the political divide tend to agree that the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment are worth our respect and defense. They should also recognize that all words must continue to be included in the Constitution's embrace--even those that get under our skin and cut us to the bone.

Few words are as toxic and offensive as those whose sole purpose involves demeaning other human beings. The popularity of such speech clearly illustrates the degree to which civility and intelligence have declined in our society. Today the public conversation is all too often dominated by ignorance masquerading as profundity, bombast disguised as eloquence, hot air passed off as insight. But banning language that fails to match commonly held standards of decency won't change things much, if at all.

A zero-tolerance prohibition against offensive speech of any kind seems perilously narrow and risks venturing into territory from which there is no easy way out. Take the N-word, for example. Most Americans agree that it has no rightful place in public conversation. But if we were to conclude that it has no rightful place anywhere, what would we do with all the valuable cultural material that includes it? What, for instance, would happen to the works of Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Maya Angelou and Walter Dean Myers? They are among the great African-American writers whose work has been frequently challenged on the grounds that the language and themes they address are indecent. Do we really want to imagine--let alone live in--a world without their magnificent contributions?

Restrictions on speech are also restrictions on intellectual freedom, a constraint African-Americans can ill afford. "The right to think is the beginning of freedom," in the words of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, and "speech is the beginning of thought." Our moral obligation to be intelligent requires access to all types of material, including words and images deemed potentially harmful by critical observers. Let us not forget that information of any kind was once considered unsuitable for African-American eyes and ears. "Learning would spoil the best [N-word] in the world," Frederick Douglass recalled his owner saying.

If not for our nation's deeply entrenched tolerance of language that challenges authority and speaks truth to power, the history of Black American leadership would be painfully short. In another country, Martin Luther King's speech at the March on Washington in 1963 would have earned him a long jail sentence. Malcolm X would have spoken only a few paragraphs of his "Ballot or the Bullet" speech before government lawmen escorted him away, depriving his listeners of his eloquence and his example.

Ida B. Wells clearly understood the importance of fearless, constructive dissent when she wrote, "Is there no redress, no peace, no justice in this land for us? Tell the world the facts." Without unfettered expression, the facts may very well be banished to the shadows, far from the light of day, where they can do no one any good.

Speech, no matter how painful, deserves to remain free.

Jabari Asim is an editor at the Washington Post and author of The N-Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't and Why.

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