Shilloh Hendrix is a woman being charged in a Minnesota court over using racial ethnic slurs towards others.
Should people be jailed, fined, or incarcerated with jail time utilizing negative racial ethnic slurs towards others?
As a free speech advocate my response to all of that is no. What are other peoples response to this here on the forum?
I suspect that there is much, much more to this story than
is being reported, and until I get that information, I am unable
to adequately answer this…
Kropotkin
She spoke some racial ethnic slurs to a man and some children at a public park on recording video camera. End of the story
MrAuthoritarian:
She spoke some racial ethnic slurs to a man and some children at a public park on recording video camera. End of the story
K: you know, I am a son of a long time Newspaper man, he owned
a paper and was an executive in a nationally known chain of
newspapers… and so, I know that these types of stories
are never ‘‘end of story’’ that there is always, always something
else in the story that we are not being told… I just wonder what it is?
Note, I am not taking sides, I am just wondering what is missing
from this story…
Kropotkin
I think i gonna go and get a glass of tonic
Of course not. But you live in the cesspit of woke so what do you expect? She’s obviously a vile person (who talks to a child like that?) but if that were something that earns prison time then most of the population would be in prison.
If people are imprisoned for using hurty words then it needs to be across the board. Bitch, idiot, retard, imbecile, moron, arsehole, cunt, shithead, white trash, trailer trash, POS, wanker…
Even weirder is that black ghetto-trash American men call each other nigger all the time. It’s even a compliment 
You lot are beyond peculiar. You are deranged, demented and dangerous.
All the pearl clutching and faux outrage in the world isn’t going to change the glaring and nauseating hypocrisy of woke America.
Ooh look, the little imbecile American who preaches kumbaya and group hugs is doing his little dance again. Bless 
It’s not just the United States, most of these criminal hate speech laws of arrest or fines originates from Europe, Canada, and Australia.
You being from New Zealand I believe your nation has similar laws.
Yes, it’s a banana dance, but you at least in your post made some sense which is why you didn’t get the clown face. Banana dance is always better than clownface emoji.
I find your position interesting considering many others who are liberal support arresting, handing out fines, and ruining people’s lives over racial ethnic slurs directed towards others.
I cannot think of a single time a person has been arrested, fined, or had their name ruined publicly for throwing out negative racial epithets towards ethnic white European people. If you’re going to have such laws in place it needs to be equal all across the board otherwise it just looks like laws against white people specifically who are being singled out.
Ultimately as a free speech advocate I do not believe any kind of speech should be criminalized even if they’re acting like assholes.
People have the free speech right to act like vulgar assholes even if the majority public condemns it. Yet again we have democratic liberals devising criminal speech laws.
MrAuthoritarian:
I find your position interesting considering many others who are liberal support arresting, handing out fines, and ruining people’s lives over racial ethnic slurs directed towards others.
K: as I said before, I simply don’t have enough information is this
particular case to comment on it… as for the rest, it is really
a case by case determination… because every case has its own
thing going on…
Kropotkin
MrAuthoritarian:
People have the free speech right to act like vulgar assholes even if the majority public condemns it. Yet again we have democratic liberals devising criminal speech laws.
K: and yet again, as far as I can tell, she was arrested for disorderly conduct,
not free speech laws… but again, there are things going on in the
shadows that make this case unknowable…
Kropotkin
How kind of you to tell me where I’m from. I didn’t realise we were friends and that I confided in you and told you personal information about myself, ditto anyone else on here. I always thought I was from somewhere else entirely. I’m shocked 
America is the epicentre of wokism and you know it. You are happy to acknowledge that the US dominates and dictates Western cultural trends when it suits you.
New Zealand doesn’t have hate speech laws. Canada and Australia might as well be states of the US. Europe isn’t a country. It has many and varied laws depending on where in Europe you are referring to.
So you acknowledge that your own posts make no sense, because you give ALL of them the clown face 
Any evidence for that? (apart from your father being a ‘newspaper man’ )
Apparently she was convicted of ‘disorderly conduct’. If that consisted of a ‘racial slur’ (which seems to be the only thing being mentioned) then it only proves how meaningless the term ‘hate speech’ is. Since the US doesn’t even have ‘hate speech’ laws, then ‘disorderly conduct’, which is highly subjective and open to abuse and wokery, serves as a handy substitute. ‘Free speech’ has to mean free speech because it’s too easy to get around.
The odious woman has earned nearly a million dollars for her nastiness. Something needs to be done about that ‘go fund me’ bullshit. Americans will be murdering their own children to get ‘go fund me’ money. They are certainly profiting from the murder of their children using that method. It’s disgusting the way Americans can profit from the murder of their family members. It goes against any kind of human decency.
Who are the morons donating? It should ONLY be for help paying for the medical needs of children. It’s not needed in proper countries that have universal free health care. Humans manage to abuse and corrupt EVERYTHING.
The reporting on this case is abysmal, which isn’t surprising given it’s become a symbolic fight for people who want to shout racial slurs at children.
You can find the actual case documents on the court’s wbesite: Minnesota Records Online, search case number 55-CR-25-6656.
Look especially at the jury instructions. That lays out the specific findings of fact that the jury had to make in order to find her guilty.
She was tried for two counts of disorderly conduct: one for her interaction with the child, and one for her interaction with the man who started filming her.
She was only convicted of the second; here is the relevant language from the jury instructions:
Count II: Disorderly Conduct: Encounter with the Man Recording at the Park
DEFINED
Under Minnesota law, whoever, knowing or having reasonable grounds to know that it will tend to alarm, anger, or disturb others, or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct, or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others,
is guilty of a crime.
ELEMENTS
The elements of this crime are:
First, the defendant engaged in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct, or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.
If you find that the defendant’s conduct consisted only of offensive, obscene, or abusive language, you must also find that the words used were “fighting words.” Speech is not “fighting words” merely because it is racist. “Fighting words” are words that constitute personally offensive epithets that, when spoken to the ordinary person, under the particular circumstances of the case, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke a violent reaction or incite an immediate breach of the peace by those to whom such words are addressed. The offense may be based upon the utterance of fighting words alone, without resulting in actual violence. The focus is upon the nature of the words and the circumstances in which they were spoken, rather than upon the actual response.
Second, the defendant knew or believed or had reasonable grounds to know that the conduct would, or could, tend to alarm, anger, disturb, provoke an assault by, or provoke a breach of the peace by others.
Third, the defendant’s act took place in a public or private place.
Fourth, the defendant’s act took place on or about April 28, 2025, in Olmsted County.
If you find that each of these elements has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant
is guilty. If you find that any element has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant is not guilty.
The description of fighting words fits precedent as I understand it; the right to free speech doesn’t extend to the provocation of violence.
In particular, the jury was explicitly instructed that racial slurs alone are not enough. But racial slurs certainly can be fighting words – to argue otherwise is to suggest that racial slurs should have special constitutional protection over and above other types of insults.
One other legal point is the distinction between findings of fact and findings of law:
This ruling is being appealed, i.e. sent to a higher court for review. If the jury instructions didn’t accurately reflect law and precedent, or if the Supreme Court wants to continue its streak of ignoring longstanding precedent, the verdict could be set aside and she could be tried again or have the case dismissed.
Still, a ‘jury of her peers’ (that her attorney helped select) found that she did the thing described in this trial. I think those things are bad, and we should discourage people who do them. I think it’s bad that she’s been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for what she did, and I don’t think a thousand dollar fine and 200 hours of community service do much to offset that.
Being widely known as a gutter racist who accosts strangers at the playground while holding her todler should have net negative consequences for her. No good society can be sustained where that behavior is rewarded the way she’s been rewarded for it.
That will be true even if this conviction is overturned.
Are you kidding me? The one debatable thing she got off on, but telling off some asshole who’s got a camera in your face is no? Isn’t it illegal to film people without their consent to begin with?
This fucking world.
Why is a ‘racial slur’ any different from any other slur? I doubt if the little boy would understand inexplicable adult nuance and pearl-clutching racial hangups and hypocrisy. He would most likely only have been aware of her attitude towards him, body language and tone of voice.
No. It isn’t.
