Introduction

Recently we have had a lot of discussion about the effects of banning certain types of content on Reddit and other platforms.

I think many of us who are libertarian minded find this troubling.

I would like to look at the similar and related issue of banning racism and hate speech.

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My own experiences of racism

Being born as a child of Indian/Pakistani descent and growing up in the 1980s and 1990s in England racism was much more common than it is today.

Some of my earliest memories are of being spat on (usually by adults) who shouted "Paki" at me as a child.

I remember incidents like one woman spitting bubble gum in my hair (which may sound like a silly prank but try getting it out) and getting in to trouble with my mother because I was too ashamed to admit what happened.

Further my school was in two separate locations that I had to walk between and I remember one particularly vicious bastard would hurl expletives at me if he saw me and try to hit me with his car.

That was not the only physical violence and I remember incidents of being pushed in to traffic by adults who seemed to think that trying to murder or seriously assault a child was a "jolly jape" - if they had brown skin.

These things have a deep impact on you as a child and it can make you fearful, even paranoid of your own country/home.

As I got bigger and more physically imposing this stopped but I suppose the fear of being considered an outsider or somehow less than others will always remain.

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If you think that makes me in favour of banning hate speech...

That said I don't think you can just ban certain attitudes, beliefs or behaviours out of existence.

I believe that is potentially counterproductive and just because we don't see racism as overtly or openly as we did before does not mean it is not there.

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I would rather know who my enemy is

It is not necessarily good to hide things. In some ways I consider hidden racism to be a greater problem than the overt kind.

If someone spits in my face at least I know where they stand but if someone is nice to my face but then goes away and demonises me behind my back I am not even aware of the potential damage that is occurring.

Additionally I do not have the opportunity to challenge them or work to help change their opinions and win them over.

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The Truth about Racism

Racism is a form of prejudice. Prejudice arises from fear. It is due to the need to discriminate quickly whether something is a threat or not.

One of the most deep seated human fears is fear of the unknown. The best horror films prey upon this. In my experience most racists/homophobes have never actually gotten to know a person of the other colour or sexuality. When they actually do it can quickly lead to a change in their attitudes.

This is in some ways similar to how people with phobias can make them worse by avoiding the thing which provokes the fear. It allows them to create all kinds of beliefs around the fear that are completely unrealistic and out of control.

In the same way a person with a hatred/fear of a certain group develops unrealistic dehumanising beliefs which can become reinforced by way of not directly interacting.

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We can all be racist and harbour prejudice

We need to accept the fact that prejudice is a part of human nature and that we can all be racist.

The idea that "only white people" are racist is as bad as saying that "all arabs are terrorists" and so forth.

They are gross overgeneralisations based on stereotypes and fears and they are simply not true.

However banning speech pushes people apart and allows this to get worse. It merely hides the problem as I said earlier and does not deal with it.

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Words = Crime? Banning words doesn't change people's thoughts

It seems that these days there are a lot of "words" that are banned. You can get arrested in certain countries for saying certain things. This applies mainly to racist (or homophobic) speech.

We may find certain words distasteful - that is understandable.

Does banning them work though? Does it really help?

Does preventing someone from saying the "n" word or other xenophobic/prejudicial terms make them stop thinking it?

I doubt it.

It may actually make it worse:

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The Suppression Paradox

Suppressing thoughts can actually increase their intensity and there is scientific evidence (e.g. Wegner et al see abstract below) to back this up.

The abstract from the Wegner research is quite short and sums this up well:

In a first experiment, subjects verbalizing the stream of consciousness for a 5-min period were asked to try not to think of a white bear, but to ring a bell in case they did. As indicated both by mentions and by bell rings, they were unable to suppress the thought as instructed. On being asked after this suppression task to think about the white bear for a 5-min period, these subjects showed significantly more tokens of thought about the bear than did subjects who were asked to think about a white bear from the outset. These observations suggest that attempted thought suppression has paradoxical effects as a self-control strategy, perhaps even producing the very obsession or preoccupation that it is directed against. A second experiment replicated these findings and showed that subjects given a specific thought to use as a distracter during suppression were less likely to exhibit later preoccupation with the thought to be suppressed.

This is just one experiment (and an old one at that) which shows that if you ask someone to actively suppress a word or visual image it can make it more intense.

I think most of us know this from personal experience too. It is something that people who suffer from Obssesive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) know all too well.

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Marginalising people doesn't help

Out in the open prejudice can be challenged and questioned. We can also work to help change people's minds.

When you push it underground you encourage "hotbeds" of malcontent where people amplify their views with an echo-chamber type situation. It simply serves the opposite of it's aim.

Legal sanctions against such speech only serve to reinforce the opinion of these groups of people that they are being victimised. This simply plays into their existing belief systems and reinforces their opinions.

From another standpoint it also makes it more difficult to understand these groups or research their thinking so that we may develop ways of effectively changing them.

I think this has happened in the case of many types of extremist thinking - a good example is Islamic Extremism where it is now very much underground.

I am not convinced that helps to make us any safer.

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Conclusions - the TLDR

So what are the main points here?

You can't legislate against prejudicial thoughts and words. Doing so by banning certain speech only serves to reinforce the very thing which you are hoping to fight.

It is also unrealistic to think that we can completely eliminate prejudice - it is part of the human condition and in some ways hard wired into us.

That is not to say that we shouldn't try to fight it but free, open and frank discussion is the best way to accomplish this.

What do you think?

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