WARNING: THIS THREAD CONTAINS RACIST EVENTS
I’ve been thinking about that for quite sometime and I would like to hear more opinions.
I’m from Italy, probably one of the raciest countries in Europe and everyone, from politicians to civilians, often justify their racism saying that “it’s freedom of speech” or that “they’re entitled to have an opinion”. Some time ago a house owner refused to rent an apartment to a student because he’s black, every single comment was justifying the house owner saying that the house was his and that he was entitled to rent it to whoever he wanted. These types of stories happen daily here, completely exposed to the public eye.
A lot of times people straight up offend others and just brush it off saying that “it’s their opinion”.
I feel like people add the fact that something is their opinion as for saying “you can’t disagree with me. You can’t reply to me. I’m right because I’m entitled to be.”
I absolutely hate this situation, it’s not wrong to have an opinion but a lot of times this freedom gets abused to hurt others. Do I have a solution to this? Absolutely not, will I complain anyway? Hell yeah.
Overall I just wish that being a decent human being wasn’t a matter of “opinion”.
Freedom of speech goes both ways. One person can say something controversial and someone else can call them out. I don’t like using FoS as an excuse to say whatever because everyone can do that.
Also, normalising racism and abusing FoS go hand in hand. By constantly excusing racism by defending the racist (“It’s just a joke”, “They’re entitled to their opinion”, “It was ages ago”, “They’ve changed”, “It’s ignorance not racism”) and gaslighting the person who calls it out (“Stop making everything about race”, “People are so sensitive nowadays”, “What about the POC who aren’t offended?”, “Why don’t you focus on real racism?”) it makes racism seem like a bunch of random opinions and that it’s subjective. This fuels the cycle. All cases of racism and racist people are “up for debate” and because we can’t force people to change opinions nothing happens about it and so it can keep on happening over and over.
Racism is not a difference of opinion. Whether POC should be unjustly arrested, dehumanised, murdered, and/or discriminated against or not is not up for debate.
By normalising racism under the guise of free speech you are complicit in this system.
I absolutely agree with you. And yes, racism isn’t an opinion, being myself the daughter of immigrants and being mixed expose me daily directly to this reality. I used what’s going here as an example of people using “freedom of speech” as an excuse to do something that is only meant to hurt others. I feel like these people aren’t even open for a debate, in 2020 there’s absolutely no excuse for being ignorant, especially if we’re talking about who’s running the country and trust me, I’m an active member of a political party so I really saw what’s going on
Exactly this part! Racism has been explained and dissected for decades if not longer. What is and isn’t racism could not be made anymore clearer. I doubt that a lot of excuses of “ignorance” are genuine. They didn’t “not know” they didn’t want to.
I don’t really have a solution, either, to be honest. I hate that people are using freedom of speech to justify racism. I especially hate that they try to shield themselves from criticism using the “it’s freedom of speech” argument.
What a lot of people who say that don’t understand is that criticism is freedom of speech too! I must say, though, that’s criticism, not harassment, as I think that a lot of well-meaning people blur the line between those things requently.
This is why activism is so important, in my opinion. Sit-ins, boycots… all those things work because you hit people where it hurts: their money. But whenever activists use those completely humane methods, they get penalised for it. The hypocrisy is real
Any opinion where the logical endpoint is harmful to someone should be quenched. You’re allowed to have those opinions, when you act on them though? Sorry, not sorry
There is a BIG distance between stating your opinion and giving yourself legitimacy to insult someone because of his origin while using the free speech as an excuse to be racist.
Agree, in one case there was a girl who convince her boyfriend to do suicide and people actually argue that she didn’t physically make him do it, and she went to jail losing her trial. She got out a weeks ago
Absolutely.
With the Coronavirus outbreak people are further justifying their racism.
A video is circulating of a man assaulting another in a supermarket thinking that he was chinese when in reality he’s filipino. The worst part is that the Chinese community had to isolate itself from others even if the first person that got infected and infected everyone else is a white man.
A tweet is going around saying “You all were too busy controlling immigrants that you didn’t notice that the virus was traveling first class with a wealthy, white manager” and I couldn’t agree more