'Government Bans Words' Seems Like a Free Speech Issue

Jack Holmes
Thu, September 30, 2021

Photo credit: Andy Manis - Getty Images

For years, we had to hear about the grave threat to free speech—and a free society itself—posed by students on college campuses who had become Shock Troops in the Woke Wars. They were using the threat of pitchfork-mob cancellation to terrify conservative professors, fellow students, and visiting speakers away from speaking hard truths we all need to hear, like whatever kernels of wisdom Milo Yiannopoulos—remember that guy?—or Ben Shapiro had to offer the students of Berkeley. Never mind that these events were often stunts, ruses to create opportunities for meta-commentary about The Intolerant Left rather than an actual attempt at a dialogue on the purported issue at hand, and that these renegade free thinkers can, like anyone else, be found wielding social opprobrium to crush speech they do not like. Other people who used their speech to tell you your speech sucks became part of the authoritarian vanguard, hell-bent on SILENCING! you and forcing you to put your preferred pronouns in your email signature. This was, in its totality, a matter of grave national concern.

Anyway, now state governments are trying to ban words. We can expect to see all these same free-speech warriors snap to attention, surely. I'm not a constitutional law professor, but Government Bans Words strikes me as a First Amendment issue. The Wisconsin assembly is the latest state legislature to tackle the existential threat posed by Critical Race Theory, a phrase that has come to mean, for many people, "things that make me uncomfy," and which is so dangerous that any speech related to it must be policed by the government. The Wisconsin State Journal has the details:

In testimony before an Assembly committee last month, Wichgers said the bill would ban the teaching of concepts including “Social Emotional Learning,” “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” culturally responsive teaching, anti-racism, conscious and unconscious bias, culturally responsive practices, diversity training, equity, microaggressions, multiculturalism, patriarchy, restorative justice, social justice, systemic racism, white privilege, white supremacy and “woke,” among others.

Look, even if you think racism is not a problem in America—an impressive bit of psychological contortion!—surely you'd see there is a problem in banning "social justice" from public-school curriculums. Also, as the State Journal notes, there is no indication that any K-12 school in Wisconsin is teaching CRT, normally the purview of law schools and academic journals. (One right-wing activist said the quiet part out loud on this already, proudly admitting that the goal was to make Critical Race Theory a catch-all term for perceived excesses of the left.) But what's actually happening in reality is irrelevant.

"The idea that we are going to say that one race is superior, that one religion is better than the other, that one sex has certain characteristics that make it better than the other, that is preposterous, it should never happen," Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Tuesday. Great! Luckily, no one is suggesting that and it isn't happening. (Vos of course had the unmitigated gall to quote Martin Luther King, Jr. later in this slapdick treatise.) This is a neat look into the psychology here, though, which boils down to the old adage that when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. Acknowledging that Milwaukee's history and its present have been fundamentally informed by redlining policies that enforced racial segregation is not a statement that Black people are superior to white people. It happened, it is bad, and we should talk about it and do something about it.

Photo credit: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS - Getty Images

It's funny that Vos brought up religion, though, and not just because he hails from the same party as many of the folks who can be found hollering that America is a Christian nation. (James Madison is having a terrible day, wherever he may be.) All this reminds me of my days in catechism class, where asking the wrong question could shut down the discussion and possibly get you on God's naughty list. Even discussing the prospect that Black people might have a bumpier ride in America is a grave horror, it seems. The only solution, in the free state of Wisconsin, is for the government to ban such discussions in public schools. Just like in catechism class, the mark of a strong argument is refusing to have one at all. Helpfully, the State Journal provides the full list of words that, according to Republican Chuck Wichgers of Muskego, the government intends to prohibit:

Critical Race Theory (CRT)

Action Civics

Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

Culturally responsive teaching

Abolitionist teaching

Affinity groups

Anti-racism

Anti-bias training

Anti-blackness

Anti-meritocracy

Obtuse meritocracy

Centering or de-centering

Collective guilt

Colorism

Conscious and unconscious bias

Critical ethnic studies

Critical pedagogy

Critical self-awareness

Critical self-reflection

Cultural appropriation/misappropriation

Cultural awareness

Cultural competence

Cultural proficiency

Cultural relevance

Cultural responsiveness

Culturally responsive practices

De-centering whiteness

Deconstruct knowledges

Diversity focused

Diversity training

Dominant discourses

Educational justice

Equitable

Equity

Examine “systems"

Free radical therapy

Free radical self/collective care

Hegemony

Identity deconstruction

Implicit/Explicit bias

Inclusivity education

Institutional bias

Institutional oppression

Internalized racial superiority

Internalized racism

Internalized white supremacy

Interrupting racism

Intersection

Intersectionality

Intersectional identities

Intersectional studies

Land acknowledgment

Marginalized identities

Marginalized/Minoritized/Under-represented communities

Microaggressions

Multiculturalism

Neo-segregation

Normativity

Oppressor vs. oppressed

Patriarchy

Protect vulnerable identities

Race essentialism

Racial healing

Racialized identity

Racial justice

Racial prejudice

Racial sensitivity training

Racial supremacy

Reflective exercises

Representation and inclusion

Restorative justice

Restorative practices

Social justice

Spirit murdering

Structural bias

Structural inequity

Structural racism

Systemic bias

Systemic oppression

Systemic racism

Systems of power and oppression

Unconscious bias

White fragility

White privilege

White social capital

White supremacy

Whiteness

Woke

All these specifics, though, are a sideshow. As with all the other state governments trying to police speech, the Wisconsin legislature has no legitimate role here. A parallel bill is determined to ban private companies from doing diversity training for employees! This is the kind of thing the First Amendment was actually concerned with, as opposed to college students telling you to fuck off. The latter is what this country is all about.