Hate, Free Speech, and American Business

by Jeffrey Imm
Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.)
http://www.realcourage.org/2010/02/hate-free-speech-and-business/

A number of people have asked about R.E.A.L.'s protests regarding the "white nationalist hate group" American Renaissance plans to hold a conference in the Washington DC area.

We do not deny their free speech or their right to assemble. In fact, we have repeatedly invited them to our public street corner event along with other members of the public on February 19 to debate us, where we have an assembly notification filed with the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department.

But an American business is not a public street corner.

In virtually every American business, while free speech is respected, so is human dignity and human safety. That is a fundamental expectation of trust that American businesses extend to their customers, no matter what their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or political views.

In any American business, you expect that the business will have the social conscience to respect your dignity and safety. You don't expect to have to ask for this. You take it for granted. If you can't have such basic respect for your human dignity and safety considered by a business, then you don't do business with them again. You don't want to be associated with businesses that can't have that much of a social conscience for its community.

If you go to any restaurant, and you hear a customer shouting racial comments and making derogatory comments about people of other races, you have a choice - you can put up with it and respect their freedom of speech to promote racial hatred in a place of business, or you can leave. Most people would expect the manager to step in and do something about it first. Most people would expect their dignity to be respected in a place of business.

You could go to the restaurant manager and complain about the derogatory racial comments being made, and the manager could shrug and say "what can I do about it? It is his freedom of speech."

But most businesses understand that you have a basic expectation of human dignity and safety that you should enjoy when doing business with that company. Most businesses understand that and so they respect your dignity and safety, over the unfettered rights of other customers to threaten your dignity and safety with comments that promote hate.

Whether they are comments attacking someone else because of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or other identity, in American business, hate simply is not tolerated by businesses' employees. So why should we expect businesses to tolerate hate by their customers?

This holds true with hotels as well. Jewish Americans have a right to tell hotels that they don't feel safe and that their dignity is violated by those groups that hold conferences at hotels that promote Holocaust Denial or promote Neo-Nazism. Black Americans and Hispanic Americans have a right to tell hotels that they don't feel safe and their dignity is violated by those groups that hold conferences that belittle their race and promote white supremacism. These are rights that we all have, regardless of our religion, regardless of our race, regardless of our gender, regardless of our ethnicity.

Like all of us, businesses also have a responsibility to equality AND liberty - and you don't have one without the other. That is the point of our mission, that is the argument that we make for our universal human rights, which includes defending our human dignity.

There was a day once, when I was a small boy, when too many businesses in America didn't believe that.

There was a day that I vividly recall in Virginia Beach, where I saw hotels that were so willing to reject the human rights, dignity, and safety of others, that sought to publicly advertise for "White Clientele Only."

Thankfully, in most of America, those ugly days of public racism and hatred by businesses are long behind us.

American businesses still respect freedom of speech and ideas, but businesses also understand that our freedoms include our human dignity to expect a safe place to do business without being subjected to hate.

Our free speech includes our right to Reject Racism and Hate. Our free speech includes our right to expect that our businesses be safe places that respect our diversity and dignity as human beings. Our free speech includes our right to promote Equality and Liberty.

Choose Love, Not Hate.