First Amendment means something else to millennials
Over the last few years a chilling fact has become clear to me as a teacher of American Politics.
Our high school students, who are taught to be tolerant of their fellow students regardless of skin color or class, do not understand a basic tenet of the First Amendment: Mean people get to speak.
By teaching our children tolerance when they are in school, we might also teach them not to be tolerant of hateful people. But there’s the rub: tolerance of speech applies to everyone, not the ones who we decide deserve it.
Two recent events underscore that it’s more important than ever for teenagers and collegeage adults to understand that most-American ideal.
At UC Berkeley, violent clashes have erupted between supporters of conservative speakers on campus and an amorphous group called “Antifa” (Anti-Fascists), also known as the Black Bloc.
At nearby Albany High School, four students were disciplined for racist posts on Instagram. Their attorneys, who have sued the school district, claim that the four were then harassed, chased and beaten by their fellow students — although the facts are yet to come out in court.
Since the election of Donald Trump, leaders in Bay Area schools have seen a rash of racially insensitive actions by students, such as “Heil Hitler” salutes during class. This is alarming. But should that alarm send a message to students that it’s OK to beat on the people we disagree with?
This Constitutional, generational disconnect is most obvious when my class discusses the Westboro Baptist Church, a participant in a famous Supreme Court case, Snyder v. Phelps (2010).
The church is a fringe group that believes God is punishing America for its pro-gay policies by killing soldiers sent overseas by the government. It’s a professional protest group that likes to visit soldiers’ funerals to create attention for itself, and it’s good at this insidious goal. These aren’t the kind of people we feel good about supporting in court.
When my students find out that eight of our country’s nine top judges believe the church has the freedom to keep protesting at funerals, it runs counter to every tolerance lesson they have been exposed to. They don’t understand why someone should be able to inflict psychological damage on a grieving father.
I attempt to break it down for them. But without some instruction in high school on free speech issues, I fear that these young people will grow into adults who lead our society down a path that tramples the First Amendment.
There are conflicting demands on school grounds. We want our high schools and college campuses to be safe learning environments, so we institute hate speech codes that dictate “rulesof-the-road” for appropriate academic discussion.
There is a long history of court decisions that allow these codes, but this is an evolving area of the law. Most scholars would not say these codes create new areas of “unprotected speech” (i.e. speech that the government can restrict).
As a teacher, I hold out hope every summer that my students go home with a better understanding of free speech than they received in high school.
Tolerance doesn’t mean becoming a speech-warrior wielding helmet and nightstick, claiming you are defending the marginalized by beating back pro-Trump protesters. It means sitting back and gritting your teeth while the most hateful people say the most hateful things — and then giving silent thanks that you grew up in a society where that is what we do.
There are conflicting demands on school grounds. We want our high schools and college campuses to be safe learning environments, so we institute hate speech codes that dictate “rules-of-the-road” for appropriate academic discussion. There is a long history of court decisions that allow these codes, but this is an evolving area of the law. Most scholars would not say these codes create new areas of “unprotected speech” (i.e. speech that the government can restrict).