Equality and Speech (John Speaking)
		Comment		Source		MAIN PATH: Malik
						Malik

I think your argument is based on bad sociology. You are working off two key assumptions:

• Language, and especially hate speech, creates social inequality.
• Eliminating hate speech will radically reduce social inequality.

Both assumptions are false. If we eliminated all hate speech tomorrow it would do almost nothing to reduce economic and political inequality between the races and sexes in the United States.

Think about the important forms of inequality: unequal incomes, unequal wealth, unequal medical care, unequal political power, and so on. All of these things would remain the same even if we were as polite and respectful as possible to each other. I am not saying that hate speech is trivial or that we should not try our best to reduce the amount of it in our society. I am saying that it does not have the crucial position in the causal nexus of social life that you claim for it.

Whatever the constitutionality of our speech code, a constitutional amendment that allowed us to ban hate speech simply would not have the consequences for substantive or social equality that you suggest. Vera and Malik are the victims of a bad theory of society.

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