Shiloh Hendrix and racial ethnic slurs

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
201

There is only one reason Shiloh Hendrix went to jail.

That reason is that different people really disliked her words. Speaking them she was considered to be breaking no laws by a court. So that same court found a way to condemn her for it without condemnig her for it, which is about the slimiest thing a human can be, including all the lizards around here defending it.

It’s not complicated. One can imagine this headline:

“Woman to Get Jail Time for Yelling at Man Who Started Following and Filming Her with Phone”

202

I think this is also philosophically interesting.

The assumption, the state, is the government being involved. In order for the government not to be involved and one to simply go about their day, one requires protection.

203

You won’t even know it soon. We have pervert glasses now.

204

But the provocation here, obviously, is not filming itself.

If that person had had pervert glasses, given the intent they had, they would still have whipped out a phone and shoved it in the person’s face.

205

Although, to be sure, pervert glasses would also be something people would autoregulate if it weren’t for all these benign protections.

206

@Carleas

Where does any of this end?

What is to stop people from making false accusations to get people fired, ruin their lives, and hurt them financially? There’s plenty of that going around.

Even if what you say is right in regards to the law I don’t agree with it.

I am not in support of using racial or ethnic slurs against others, but I am not in support of people being arrested and fined over them either.

It’s a very slippery slope arresting people over spoken words.

:clown_face:

207

Yeah that’s right. It protects racial slurs, it doesn’t protect public disorderlyness (even when it’s achieved via racial slurs).

Just as a point of fact: decisions about what to charge aren’t made by the court, they’re made by the prosecutor (or, more likely in this case, the prosecutor’s boss). But juries check that decision at two points: the grand jury hears only the state’s case and approves the indictment (the decision to charge someone with a specific crime); and the petit jury hears arguments from both the state and the accused at trial and decides the relevant facts.

The court’s role is to make sure the trial is done right, that the jury is presented with the right questions, and that the accused’s rights are respected.

What’s to stop people from being falsely accused of almost any other crime? Like, someone can lie and say you hit them with your car, right? How is this case special?

The conduct in question in this case, everything Hendrix did for which she was convicted, was filmed, and to my knowledge there was no dispute as to the accuracy or completeness of the video.

1 Like
208

@Carleas

Yes, in this particular case she was filmed and recorded saying those things. I am not disputing that.

But there are bad actors watching all of this thinking how they can utilize stuff like this for false accusations and laws like this helps them get away with stuff like that.

:clown_face:

209

It’s pretty obvious it was because of the use of the ‘word-that-must-never-be-written-or-uttered’, which is ironic in a way. It’s a word that was used specifically in the US, specifically for black Americans, and specifically in a specific part of the US. Those people were Somali, and Somalis were never used for the American slave trade. The word would have no particular historical significance to them, and Somalia has no significant historical connection to the US. Apart from its use in the US, it literally only means ‘black’, from the Latin ‘niger’.

1 Like
210

Of which, by speaking them, she was found innocent.

Is this one of those “we can’t peg it on her so we will bend the truth to peg it for nominally something else?”

Oh, ok, I guess this means the decisions are beyond the scope of logical legalistic scrutiny.

Magic? They can say whatever?

It’s even worse, it’s a transliteration from Portuguese and Spanish “negro,” which were the ones really running the slave labour trade.

I wrote this in a previous post, and it got held for approval. What exactly in it triggered it?

211

I noticed that. The first time it was used on here it got through. Must have been hastily censored after that.

It’s even pronounced the same as the Latin word, with a hard ‘G’ sound, except that the ‘i’ would have had a long ‘E’ sound, rather than a short ‘i’ sound. Much closer to that than ‘n*gro’. People don’t realise how well educated the early Americans were.

Oh, I see it’s n**ro that’s being censored, not ‘the-word-that-must-never-be-uttered-or-written’. Americans are so weird :grin:

212

The people buying labourers from the boats were not some high society plantation owner, they were traders.

They would not have been able to pronounce n*gro, either with an e or, as I believe it is in Portuguese (which would have been the majority of the importers), with an i, or probably known what it means. It was just what the wholesalers called them. If you know anything about how English speaking natives transliterate those two languages, the-word-that-must-not-be-typed is exactly how they would do it.

213

That, by the way, is why it eventually became an insult. The implication is not so much about genes, but that what you are is a a labour market tool, like a tiller.

I’m sure that, before the abolition of slave labour, there was no actual malicious intent in the word.

What built up the disdain into tension into hate was, obviously, suddenly having a bunch of people that months ago were legally below you suddenly side by side, taking up resources that you didn’t use to have that competition for, much less by people who are legally below you, who come from a radically different culture (usually one where there weren’t even cities to speak of), and, as usual, drastically intensified by the northerners with their fucking moralizing absolutism. Many, maybe most, of the Confederate generals agreed that slave labour was at odds with the constitution, to which they felt loyal.

But there you go. Feelangs. Lincoln was a stupid hick, who was groomed by certain radical elements to just start shit and blow shit up.

214

I was referring to '‘the-word-that-must-never-be-uttered-or-written’. It’s the Latin word for ‘black’ with an extra G. It even has almost the same pronunciation. I think ‘n*gro’ was initially considered polite, from ‘n##roid’ which was a quasi-scientific term at the time. Americans have been tying themselves into knots for a while now trying to find a ‘polite’ was to describe black Americans, instead of them just being ‘American’.

Wow, even the censored version is censored.

215

If that was the case, why did only people directly involved in the slave labour market develop such a fancy Latin term, instead of just using what they would have known is the English translation, “black?”

The answer is that it was just the market term used for that forced labour, which was introduced by a culture (Iberians) who had been plying that trade for four hundred years.

216

It’s the “gr” sound specially that would have tripped them up, specially with only one soft vowel before and a hard vowel right after, and specially because the Iberian “r” sound does not even exist in English, either the Portuguese or the Spanish one. They would have instinctively separated them and put a soft vowel inbetween, “e” being the standard neutral one par excellence.

Thingamajigger.

Get it tossed around among English speaking natives without even the reference of the original for long enough, and it snowballs.

217

I dont argue against that.
Clearly there is an intent there and clearly it is not positive. I do not question that.
But the difference in scope and magnitude between a verbal provocation and physical assault (in response) is so WILDLY different that its borderline nonsensical.

Offensive speech laws create an implication and precedent within the legal framework that there is an expectation of violence connected to free speech. Even if it does not justify violence in response to speech, yielding this argument, this expectation, is already too much.
Its too much because nutters like the left today, will instantly take up on it and start to argue the same things they are doing right now, today, this very moment, that speech is violence.

I can only repeat myself that under this logic, what happened to Charlie Kirk is justifiable because there is this idea floating around somewhere in society and even in the legal framework that if someone offends you then you can be reasonably expected to retaliate for it physically.

Now we cant say it out loud and specifically like that, but we gonna make laws to punish your offensive speech.

Sorry… i am no free speech absolutist by any means. I do not think you should be able to lie, scam, cheat, incite and ruin other people’s reputation at your leisure.
However on this particular subject, the notion of offensive speech and fighting words, i totally am, because its COMPLETE insanity.

Even if someone were to provoke you the most outrageous and direct of ways like the eye to eye n wording a black person, with the clear intent to provoke a fight… you STILL have every ability, option, choice to just walk away from it.
As simple as that.
You can get up. Spit in front of the dude, and walk away with a smirk, because its your agency, your decision, and you are not an animal that is incapable of contextualizing a situation and thus is skull fucked by it’s own biological mechanisms and instincts into reacting.

Offensive speech laws imply the polar opposite of this.
That you ARE an animal.
That you have NO choice.
That you can be reasonably expected to react.
And such an implication, ESPECIALLY in the legal framework, has too many and way too far reaching implications. This conversation could exist in ethics, philosophy, moral framework and maybe considered as a factor by a judge and jury, but to have it in law? Thats just asking for your society to go to hell like britain is doing right now with it’s blasphemy laws and jailing people for praying silently inside their own heads.

Any society that does not categorize offensive speech as free speech, is fucked in the head.
This entire thing goes in the wrong think and thought policing level and category.

1 Like
218

I am not going to argue on what free speech means in the US constitution, but I will express my opinion on how I see it.

Free speech rights should aim at protecting you when expressing ideas, not when insulting personally other people.

Charlie Kirk was expressing opinions and he was debating ideas. From what I have seen in his videos, even in heated moments he never surpassed boundaries in language. His death was attack in free speech. You could disagree with him all day long, but you could not charge him with disorderly conduct.

Shiloh Hendrix did not argue against ideas, she insulted people using racial slurs.

Very simple example: If I say: “trans women should not participate in women sports” is an opinion. If I say directly to a trans woman: “you are a faggot, you should not show your face in women sports” is not opinion, is personal attack. The first should be treated as free speech, the second not.

Moreover, as @Carleas said, physical violence against Hendrix is not justifiable, but this does not annul her insulting behavior. One does not exclude the other.

The disorderly conduct laws are not in place to justify violence, their aim is to prevent it.

219

I don’t see why you’re bringing up false accusations multiple times in this thread. What’s special about Disorderly Conduct laws that makes them more prone to false accusations than other laws? Isn’t any law available to be abused that way?

There’s a reason that being tried for a crime involves a trial, a jury, evidence etc.

2 Likes
220

But that’s not really how the law was applied. She used racial slurs with the children, but the was acquitted on that charge. And she was not using the slurs there in a presenting my philosophical position way. What she was convicted of what disorderly conduct in relation to the cameraman. There were slurs, but there was also aggressive behavior even if there was no violence.

I have some concerns about disorderly conduct laws, though I’d have to see the the video to weigh in here. But my main point is that while your distinction is an important one, it’s not really what happened there and it’s not really how the law is intended.