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A Collision of Principles? Free Expression, Racial Equality and the Prohibition of Racist Speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2001

Kimberly A. Gross  and
Donald R. Kinder
Kimberly A. Gross
Affiliation:
Center for Political Studies, Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan
Donald R. Kinder
Affiliation:
Center for Political Studies, Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan
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Extract

Freedom of expression is celebrated as one of the glories of the American political system. But does all speech deserve immunity? In particular, should speech designed to vilify or degrade on the basis of race be protected? Opinions on racist speech are complicated because they must accommodate two fundamental democratic principles that operate at cross purposes: freedom of expression, which implies support for racist speech, and racial equality, which implies the opposite. Using data from the 1990 General Social Survey, we examine how Americans resolve this conflict. Our major finding is that the principle of free expression dominates the principle of racial equality. What contemporary legal scholars regard as a hard case entailing a collision of democratic principles, ordinary Americans seem to interpret as a straightforward application of just a single principle. This result mirrors and perhaps reflects a nearly century-long and mostly lop-sided debate favouring free speech among American elites.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , July 1998 , pp. 445 - 471
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 1996. We are indebted to Mark Brandon, Nancy Burns, Lisa D'Ambrosio, Carolyn Funk, Michael Hagen, James Gibson and Nicholas Winter for their good advice, and to Julie Weatherbee for her great help in preparing the manuscript.