In Defense of Prejudice: Why Incendiary Speech Must Be Protected by Rauch - Essay Example

Summary: In Defense of Prejudice: Why Incendiary Speech Must Be Protected According to the article, “In Defense of Prejudice: Why Incendiary Speech Must Be Protected,” regulation of prejudice has become a comprehensive facet that has proved challenging. This implies that in some situations, prejudice has caused confusion and there is a feeling for the modification of the statements regarded as hate speech as well as the policies regulating prejudice. The author’s main idea in the article is that prejudice is complex and has advanced beyond the barriers of the previous considerations. Therefore, prejudice should only be redefined for proper regulation and people should not think of totally eradicating prejudice. Prejudice is amongst some of the currently prohibited aspects in the society and especially in the United States. Prejudice is associated with hate speech and has similar magnitude of regards. The general public has expressed its concern against prejudice as well as the hate speech related to race, gender or both. Individuals such as Francis L. Lawrence have been expressed to the stipulations shunning prejudice due to his utterance. Francis L. Lawrence once expressed that blacks were the most disadvantaged and lacked genetic hereditary to merit any higher advantage. Craig Rogers also filed an expensive case about her lesbian professor of psychology for leaving her feeling rapped and also trapped. Learning institutions have formulated strategies to ensure no tolerance to prejudice of any manner ranging from racism to Christian bashing. This has been implemented to ensure that the society is favorable to the perceived minorities. By resisting every element of prejudice, it does not depict that the racial aspect does not exist in every individual. Nonetheless intellectual pluralism should be embraced to permit respect of expression of every individual. "Only when racism and other forms of prejudice are expunged," The suppression of prejudice targets the time when there will be a total belief among individuals in the society that there is no difference in human origin, a provision that is even doubted still. The author states that, “I doubt such a day will ever arrive.” The feeling of segregation is recurrent in human and should be suppressed every time. If a total freedom exists, people will be legitimate in their diverse thoughts such as insanity of the homosexuals, their barrier to reproduction and the doubts they impose on people. Moreover, as the efforts are geared towards doing away with the prejudice it is realized that no much achievement are attained and as a result the conditions worsen. Therefore, it would be wise to start thinking and implementing the facets of prejudice at the expense of eliminating them. Prejudice has caused much confusion in the society and bad habits in the society such as homosexuality benefit from the policies and opposing homosexuality is a prejudice to the group. For instance the student arraigned before the senate for hate speech against the homosexuals by outlining that it can be treated by a therapy. In this case it is not easy to determine who is right neither is it necessary but proper direction and modification of prejudice to be useful to the society is critical. According to Rauch, "eradicating prejudice" is so vague a proposition as to be meaningless.” Science is the rationale behind impartiality in alleviating prejudice. In spite of the capability of science to be factual and unbiased, the scientists are equally biased and would engage their biases in reasoning hence influencing the results. Therefore, the rationale posed by science is vulnerable to the least influences beginning by emotions that supersede their love for truth. There is a predominant belief that for a system to attain an unprejudiced condition, individuals responsible for its formulation must be unprejudiced in their life and work. However there is much confusion experiencing by understanding that prejudice led to the discovery of the Auschwitz gas chambers. Enlightened scientists and researchers should create more chances for prejudices bloom to improve on the discovery of new ideas. Rauch states that, “Enlightenment tradition taught us that science is orderly, antiseptic, rational, the province of detached experimenters and high-minded logicians.”Therefore the hypotheses should die and the scientist should not be interested in any result before the end of experiment. Pluralism is the law that safeguards and constitutes a location in human company for the single minority harassed within the population of every individual. The current reasoning against prejudice eliminates warnings against the unethical ideas and some errors are tolerated in the previous provisions. The modernity has replaced the previously ugly experiences such as racism with anti racists that cannot be actually eliminated. The overriding insinuation of pluralism cannot be easily estimated by the general public and even the totality should be mentioned. Rauch highlights that, “I will call the new antipluralism "purism." The purists’ way of observing prejudice is widely used worldwide to understand the role of prejudice. Purists realized that there was no essence in pursuing words regarded as insults but have resorted on replacing them. The author states, "Context is everything." The aversion of prejudice is understood to be complex than the law or any other subject due to their presence everywhere and this would enhance the tolerance in the society and select the words to use. The society has to identify, criticize, ridicule and eliminate all elements depicting prejudice. Universities have also developed codes to punish prejudice based on different aspects such as, color, sex among other attributes. As per the school curricula, there are assumptions and thinking on racism removed. In criminal law the magnitudes of two different crimes would be dissimilar in case they made utterances depicting hate such as queer and asshole. These two cases would be regarded differently and the penalties are equally different. Employees are required to eradicate prejudice in their working places. In as much as the purists endeavor to eliminate prejudice, there is a problem since they only target the minority groups. They suppress their opinions and to not improve their esteem. Purists have also redefined words that can be released for violence, though this is ironical. There should be a realization that oppressive language holds a greater content than violence alone because the fear created by them is amplified. This implies that by comparing a verbal violence with the physical violence, there would be treacherous results. However, the author highlights that the codes have to be comprehensive and, "free of biases against any class of citizens.” Therefore for the complete eradication of prejudice, the codes of speech and the restrictions at the workplace should be emphasized. . Works Cited Rauch, Jonathan. In Defense of Prejudice: Why Incendiary Speech Must Be Protected. Harper's Magazine, May 1995. Retrieved February 6, 2013 from http://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/in_defense_of_prejudice/ Read More