Recently, a 12-year-old girl asked one of us a question: “Do you think the world is coming to an end?” For
many of us, in view of recent events, the answer is unclear.

In recent months, members of a Kansas church have protested a military funeral, with signs reading “thank God for killing gays.” An Arizona congresswoman and several of her supporters were shot outside a Safeway in Tucson. A female reporter was sexually assaulted at a demonstration in Egypt, and a media critic in New York said it was her fault. A Haight Street resident walking his dog was shot in a local grocery store.

Living at this time in history often is a sobering existence. Injustice and violence are frequent and inexplicable. But in the comfortable cocoon of our private school, sometimes it’s difficult to remember how close we are to the violence we’re witnessing play out in the public sphere. The hard truth is that we each play a large part in perpetuating violence by using and accepting hate speech.

Just what “hate speech” is can be unclear. Webster’s New World Law Dictionary defines it as “speech not protected by the First Amendment, because it is intended to foster hatred against individuals or groups based on race, religion, gender, sexual preference, place of national origin, or other improper classification.”

As Americans, we’re proud of the First Amendment and its five freedoms. So perhaps some ignorance about intolerant speech comes from the notion that you can say whatever you want. Words echo in ways we often can’t predict. Here at Urban, you may hear the n-word, “that’s so gay” and “no homo,” from
hallway conversations to exchanges on Facebook. Generally, statements such as these are socially acceptable for two reasons: students say they’re using hate speech as “a joke,” or they’re using it intentionally, as a way of reclaiming language that’s used to malign a minority group.

But in the Speak Up online forum in recent months, phrases identifying the homeless on Haight Street as “gutter punk degenerates” and “scum bags” elicited controversy and an intensive backlash. While it’s hard to imagine language pointed at a minority group would reach a formal space like Speak Up, clearly this is
one situation where a student’s opinions could constitute hate speech.

According to the Give A Damn Campaign, one violent act of hate takes place in the United States almost every hour of every single day. In 2009, 6,604 incidents of hate crime were voluntarily reported to the FBI. With such staggering statistics, it would be naïve to say that we at Urban won’t be affected by this issue at
some point in our lives.

As Marshall McLuhan, media theorist, once said, “we’re all here together on spaceship earth.” So it’s up to each individual to determine what’s going to happen to us collectively. Remaining silent when we hear something derogatory makes us all guilty of the hate crimes we see going on daily in the news. So let’s speak clearly: hatred hurts everyone, even the people perpetuating it.