Based on the Youtube clips in the above link and article, this was a very small march down the street with some chanting. One neighbor complained that the protesters were painting the entire neighborhood as racist. I would not call this overly damaging to the neighborhood or their quality of life.
No Hunt. That would not be inciting violence or promoting discrimination as this song does. I think the chances that the SAE song would be found to create a hostile educational environment would be much stronger if this were sang to or at students or workers of color or in places where many students and worker congregate.
The law also says there can’t be a hostile work environment. I would assume that the workers at the college could certainly raise that issue if they were subjected to that song on an ongoing basis. That is not the case here, but would be if this went on continually. The school could tell the students they could sing this in some far corner of the campus from 5-6 on Fridays, but not everywhere at any time.
The Baptist student association may be singing that I’m going to spend eternity in the burning fires, but they’re not suggesting that they speed up my journey to my eternal reward. It’s not at all the same as singing approvingly of lynching. If they were suggesting that unbelievers should be burned at the stake it would be a different story-- particularly if unbelievers had been burned at the stake in this country in living memory.
You could certainly limit marching and singing on campus for lots of reasons. Just not because of the content of the speech, unless it fits into one of the narrow exceptions.
I find this an odd assertion, since to my knowledge, US public universities have always allowed free speech to the same extent they do now. I know that Cal is in your neck of the woods, CF. Has it evolved into a “Lord of the Flies University,” as you described?
@donnal and @hannah maybe you should do a little legal research Outside of racist speech there was a threat of violence so I believe that may be hate speech. That may be enough to qualify under some statutes. Using racism to exclude people from fraternities or a restaurant or a theatre you dont think that is a crime Maybe not in Oklahoma!!! I will see if I can find you some specific cases
I am curious as to what distinction there is between public and private (schools, offices, golf clubs, etc). I seem to remember that Augusta Golf Club could not be compelled to admit women. Is any private entity allowed to go directly against the Constitution?
A well written piece by Geoffrey Stone, professor of law at U of Chicago, stating that the UO violated the First Amendment.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-r-stone/racist-rants-and-the-univ_b_6844500.html
So to all you parents supporting these racists right to free speech is it okay to have KKK rallies and burn crosses on the campus???
The Constitution limits State (i.e. government) action, not private action.
Here is the Berkeley code of conduct as it applies to “Terrorizing Conduct”
If I heard students singing approvingly about rape on my campus, I’d think that I was more likely to get raped on that campus. I like to think I’m a reasonable person, and I’d fear being raped if I heard people approving rape. I’d call songs approving rape and lynching “acts in reckless disregard of the risk of terrorizing.”
Re #548
Any group that well known and reviled would likely attract a massive counter protest.
Well, nobody says you have to live in America. -Hunt
Or they could attend private institutions which aren’t arms of the government. -zoosermom
And this kind of attitude has a “chilling effect” on AAs in schools like OU (or considering attending them). AAs already have to contend with acceptance shaming. Of course, the only victim here in your minds are whites and the first amendment.
- I, for one, don't mind at all that people are demonstrating outside the home of one of these boys' parents. It's not a terrible object lesson that if you do something offensive, even as a "joke," and get caught, you are going to bring public shame on your family. And it's a fair inference that the boy's parents failed to teach him that you don't do stuff like that, even under peer pressure. They may be the nicest people in the world, and maybe the opprobrium is completely undeserved, but I wouldn't bet that they are completely surprised by their son's behavior.
- Re Cardinal Fang vs. Hunt. There's a world of difference between marching through campus singing publicly about raping and lynching as, say, a demonstration of white power, and singing about raping and lynching. Billie Holiday was singing about lynching in "Strange Fruit," but it's not just that.
I am a bona fide member of a far-from-underrepresented minority that has been subjected to lynchings and worse within living memory, and whose members even today (in Paris, in Brussels, in Mumbai) have been killed simply for being who they are. Even so, I can live in a world where performances of Cabaret include an ersatz Nazi anthem and ironic anti-Semitic jokes. Not to mention The Producers. I own recordings of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg and Der Ring des Niebelungen, and recently paid to see a performance of Bach’s Passion According to St. Matthew, works whose anti-Semitism is not subtle. I own books by T.S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, Martin Heidegger, Leni Riefenstahl, Paul Celine, and Paul de Man. Also Roberto Bolano’s ironic, hilarious Nazi Literature in America, which was not published in English for a number of years after the rest of his work had appeared. The presence of those things in my world does not make it a hostile environment for me, or any more hostile than it was already.
In this case, however, the distinctions among public threat, public art, and private performance do not quite capture the problem. The fact that a group of boys was singing a racist song privately does not in and of itself constitute a threat of violence that Black people should fear. But what does contribute to a hostile environment is that these boys were being systematically trained as racists. Had they been given guns and told to shoot at pictures of Jay-Z and Beyonce while shouting “Kill n____s!,” that would have been pretty clear, even if no one was present to be intimidated by it, and even if no one outside the group ever learned that it happened. This incident wasn’t that, but it was certainly on the same spectrum.
There are serious First Amendment issues with all of this. It may be that the government cannot forbid or punish training people to be racists. But I am far from certain that it’s precluded by existing authority.
- Has anyone noticed that the offensive song here cannot be more than 50 years old, and probably less than that. It's not a hoary artifact of SAE's Confederate origins. It's a much less hoary artifact of SAE's resistance to integration within most of our lifetimes.
I would be happy to answer this question if you define what, precisely, you mean by “okay” in the question.
The Berkeley code for terrorizing doesn’t trump the First Amendment. The piece by Professor Stone states it very clearly.
Yes, and we’ve (or most of us) have learned that while most universities do have student codes of conduct that they may attempt to enforce, they are in actuality unenforceable if their provisions conflict with the First Amendment.
Also CF, the speech rights on public campuses are no more expansive (and probably less so), than those in your own city and neighborhood. Does your city and neighborhood feel like “The Lord of the Flies” town?
The reality is that people don’t do all those things you fear they will do when given mostly unfettered speech rights (that they already have). Or at least not on a widespread basis. I’ve actually seen the Westboro Church in action with their “God Hates F*gs” signs. No doubt they were subject to a constant barrage of drive-by epithets and things and bodily fluids “accidentally” flying out of car windows.
Also, the previously quoted definition of terrorizing is not dependent on the political content.
What that means is that any family is free to choose an institution whose code of conduct aligns with their own preferences or work to change them. Public institutions don’t have that ability. If you want an apple and you purchase a pear, you can’t complain about having an apple. I have chosen a private high school for my child and it has a very unforgiving code of conduct. Very publicly unforgiving. And I like that, I chose that and I support that. He knows what it is and if he violates it, the consequences are his. That wouldn’t be possible in public school and I support that as well.
Stone is not the berkeley city attorney so what he says has NO legal effect. The Berkeley code is meant to interprett the first amendment. I think the people in Berkeley and Oklahoma see things a little differently @hunt I am sorry that you dont know what the word okay means and frankly I find it more than a little troubling
Florida26, I recommend any of Nat Hentoff’s books and articles to you.