Promoting Tolerance: A Value of Free Expression

The First Amendment contains eight primary values of free expression that hold significant weight in our collaborative, communicative, and democratic society. Such values include the discovery of truth, a check on governmental power, and the protection of dissent. I believe that the most relevant in our country's current state is to promote tolerance.

In our country, freedom of speech extends to speech (or expressive action) that can be deemed as hateful or harsh. Although putting this notion into practice seems like a catalyst for division and anger, including hateful speech in the First Amendment can promote tolerance among our citizens.

Lee Bollinger writes in The Tolerant Society: Freedom of Speech and Extremist Speech about how we can use freedom of speech to become more tolerant of a diversity of opinions and backgrounds. He argues that citizens learn important lessons from hateful speech, gaining a better understanding of why fellow citizens react the way they do and why certain words or phrases are hurtful. For example, if someone yells the 'n-word' to another individual across the street and a video of that interaction is posted on social media, the negative feedback will give a societal lesson that this form of speech is not promoting tolerance and therefore should be criticized. Social media never goes away and cannot get deleted, so the individual who shouted the 'n-word' will, hopefully, be made aware of the negative impact of his language.

Overall, promoting tolerance is extremely important in today's world, with our continued polarization of opinions, political beliefs, and more. Our freedom of speech extends to hateful speech so that society can self-regulate what is and is not socially acceptable, thus leading to more tolerant individuals and communities. As responsible citizens, we must remember not only our freedom to share our thoughts and opinions, but to speak out against speech that is counter-productive to our forward-moving, innovative, and tolerant country.

That's all for now!