There are two kinds of people that will read this article. The first group will have their banners and Twitter nearby. The other group might be pleased with the title. Unfortunately, neither group will get what they expect.
There is no such thing as a “black life” a “Latino life” or a “white life”. The definition of ‘life’ is an organism that is able to keep itself alive and to reproduce. The adjective preceding life is meant to categorize the different kinds of life, like ‘yellow paprika’. But you can’t use the adjective to categorize a feeling. And that is what happens when someone is talking about “black lives” today. We are not talking about a specific race, skin color, handicap, gender, or orientation. We are talking about a feeling that occurs when someone feels undervalued. Things can be way more complicated than they seem to be.
The force that suppresses our instincts
Let’s start with the theory that every person is different. Differences could include characteristics like the color of the skin, height and weight. And internally how people think, behave or react, will automatically lead to different opinions on certain topics. A natural process to distinguish between likes and dislikes is comparison. And let the physical appearance be the most visible factor to compare two people. We can conclude that it’s normal for people to divide people based on their physical appearance. When we are talking about racism especially, mostly based on skin-color we see that even when people don’t mean to, use the external appearance to match an appearance to a behavior. And it is natural to do so. For instance, if you are bitten by a mosquito, you will avoid them and tell everyone that mosquito’s bite humans and must be killed. But you don’t have evidence that every mosquito will bite humans.
But that is the exact same way some people categorize other people on the basis of external appearance. Is it ethical? Well, that depends on the way it is formulated: is it wrong to say that all middle eastern people are hospitable? Probably not. Is it wrong to say that all middle eastern people are radical? Probably yes. And why, because something positive can be said and something negative (read subjective) not? Even if we didn’t do research on every person in the population.
Started with freedom ended with a war
Here’s the real question: do we want to allow different opinions to be expressed even when they offend some people? Or do we want to suspend freedom of speech? Freedom of speech protects the groups that are in the minority by giving them the possibility to speak in public without the permission of anyone else. And this is a very important part because at first sight, some people want to protect minorities by preventing discrimination by speech, but actually they are accomplishing the exact opposite. When the (human right) freedom of speech gets limited, only those who have the power will be able to legally preach their thoughts. And this is the early stage of a dictatorship or one-party state (read: Soviet Union, China, North-Korea, Cuba, Iran, ..).
There is a well-known adage that says that if you cannot define the boundaries of a misdemeanor you cannot regulate it! Because a person cannot properly delineate what is wrong and what is not wrong implies that some things will be in an unknown position of wrong or not. The consequence is that law becomes subjective. Think about it, something is allowed by one person (prosecutor, judge, officer) and forbidden by another. This is almost the definition of inequality! Again, here we are developing towards a “justice for money” society where only those who have power or money can afford to do what they want and obtain justice if we are not careful with how we want to “solve” our problems.
What people are trying to do is reduce discrimination as a consequence of making particular speech prosecutable. We are talking about a problem and a seemingly solution here. But do you really think that racism and discrimination will be eradicated when you don’t hear it anymore? This is more like the “I don’t see it, so it isn’t there” theory. Unfortunately, though, the opposite is true. When certain people are prevented from saying what they think in public, they will practice it behind closed doors. And this is where it gets dangerous, behind closed doors is where terrorists are made. If we look to radical groups like the KKK, ISIS, Al Qaida and the Nazis, we see that they gain strength as a consequence of oppression without knowledge of the public. Discrimination will only grow at this point since people have to share their thoughts with people that have the same interests. Notice that we have two minorities at this point, the people that feel discriminated against and the people that feel silenced. I don’t have to tell you that multiple groups that feel oppressed can start a war. We have to stop discrimination by education, not by another form of oppression.
We started with trying to end discriminatory speech, and we ended in war.
Facebook, Twitter and the ban of Trump
While I was scrolling through my social media pages, I noticed that a lot of people found the fact that a social media platform banned someone more disturbing than the fact that the most powerful person on earth encourages to use violence, threats and use fake information to prevent his bubble to burst. First of all, a social media platform run by a private company is not attached to the freedom of speech laws. Using the platform means that you agreed to the ‘terms of agreement’ which states that content that is seen as hate by an employee will be removed from the platform. Looking at this from a juridical way, the platforms do have the right to do that. From an ethical point of view, everything should be allowed. There are some options, we let the government control the platforms and preserve the right of freedom of speech, with the possibility that the government will know even more from us, read our private messages, track our locations and possibly suppress the opinions of political opposition. Or we let the platforms as they are today and limit our content between de boundaries of the terms.
What do you want to achieve
Why are you caring about what others have to say? Go on with your own life and let nothing come in between you and your goals. Are you really offended by words and sentences? What is next, getting offended when someone looks at you? You will never achieve satisfaction if you got influenced by people who might have a different opinion or want you to feel offended. Don’t blindly follow someone who looks confident and acts with charisma. If you do, you will help them achieve their goals at the expense of yours.
Conclusion
This article gives another view to what might seem to be an easily fixable problem, but when we look a bit deeper, reducing the right of ‘freedom of speech’ can have serious consequences. Please, think about this objectively before you vote for something that looks great on the outside, but without knowing the consequences (read Brexit). This article is an insight into the consequences that might have been caused by diminishing Article 19 of the universal human rights by patronizing political correctness.
Disclaimer: This article is not scientifically proven; every sentence is completely original and an opinion. Some of the thoughts are based on scientific research.
With love
Honoratus
