Rethinking the United States Position on Hate Speech in Light of the Interpol Repository
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THAT SHOULD NOT BE PROTECTED: RETHINKING THE UNITED STATES POSITION ON HATE SPEECH IN LIGHT OF THE INTERPOL REPOSITORY Joseph Lorant* I. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................. 413 II. THE HISTORY AND NARROWING OF HATE SPEECH LAW IN THE UNITED STATES: BEAUHARNAIS, BRANDENBURG AND R.A.V. 419 III. THE STRENGTHS OF INTERPOL’S REPOSITORY AND ITS CONSISTENCY WITH INTERNATIONAL LAW ........................... 423 A. How the Repository Would Assess Hate Speech Incidents 423 B. Analysis Under the Repository is Similar to Other International Standards .................................................. 431 IV. U.S. LAW SHOULD BE ENFORCED UNIFORMLY ON A DOMESTIC AND AN INTERNATIONAL ....................................................... 436 A. U.S. Court and Legislature Have Already Utilized International Law for Guidance and Harmonization ..... 437 B. The U.S. Domestic and International Approaches to Hate Speech and Discrimination Issues Should be the Same .. 440 V. CONCLUSION ................................................................................ 446 I. INTRODUCTION Nearly 1,094 bias-related incidents or attacks occurred in the United States of America in the month following President Donald J. Trump’s election.1 These incidents included race-biased demonstrations, swastikas or other drawn and graffitied imagery expressing messages of “hate and * J.D. Candidate, 2019, Southwestern Law School. 1. Hatewatch, Update: 1,094 Bias-Related Incidents in the Month Following the Election, S. POVERTY L. CTR. (Dec. 16, 2016), https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/12/16/update-1094- bias-related-incidents-month-following-election. 413 414 SOUTHWESTERN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 25:2 intolerance,” as well as physical attacks and other hate-inspired crimes.2 Such overt expressions of intolerance and hate have since diminished to a degree, but the underlying sentiments and behaviors persist.3 Further, the hate speech President Trump supplied during the election continues to unleash accompanying overt acts of violence and harassment both in the United States and abroad.4 Although the federal government and a majority of state governments protect individuals from hate crimes,5 the U.S. offers broad constitutional protections for hate speech and the promotion of hateful ideas.6 American history is riddled with problems regarding how both the government and its citizens have treated minority racial and religious groups. Stemming from the institution of slavery, racism has been pervasive among citizens and the government in the U.S.7 After the Civil War, attempts to 2. Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election, S. POVERTY L. CTR. (Nov. 29, 2016), https://www.splcenter.org/20161129/ten-days-after-harassment-and-intim idation-aftermath-election. 3. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation documented that hate crime offenses increased from 6,885 offenses in 2015, to 8,437 offenses in 2017. UNIFORM CRIME REPORT: 2015 HATE CRIME STATISTICS, U.S. DEP’T JUST. (2015) (reporting 5,850 hate crime incidents involving 6,885 offenses in 2015), https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2015/topic-pages/incidentsandoffenses_final.pdf; UNIFORM CRIME REPORT: 2016 HATE CRIME STATISTICS, U.S. DEP’T JUST. (2016) (reporting 6,121 hate crime incidents involving 7,321 offenses), https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2016/topic- pages/incidentsandoffenses.pdf; UNIFORM CRIME REPORT: 2017 HATE CRIME STATISTICS, U.S. DEP’T JUST. (2017) (reporting 7,175 hate crime incidents involving 8,437 offenses), https://ucr.fbi. gov/hate-crime/2017/topic-pages/incidents-and-offenses.pdf. See generally Hate in America, SLATE (Aug. 14, 2017, 6:05 PM), http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/1 2/hate_in_america_a_list_of_racism_bigotry_and_abuse_since_the_election.html. 4. Ayal Feinberg et al., Counties that Hosted a 2016 Trump Rally Saw a 226 Percent Increase in Hate Crimes, WASH. POST (Mar. 22, 2019), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/ 22/trumps-rhetoric-does-inspire-more-hate-crimes/?noredirect=on#click=https://t.co/bYXsN60xz H; John Sides & Michael Tesler, Donald Trump is a Symbol of White Identity Politics in Europe, Too, WASH. POST (June 21, 2018), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018 /06/21/donald-trump-is-a-symbol-of-white-identity-politics-in-europe-too/?utm_term=.cb735dd16 90d. 5. See Hate Crime Laws, U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, https://www.justice.gov/crt/hate-crime- laws (last updated Dec. 20, 2017) (detailing specific federal statutes that protect against hate crimes); Hate Crimes: Laws and Policies, U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, https://www.justice.gov/ hatecrimes/laws-and-policies (last visited Dec. 20, 2017) (indicating that only five U.S. states – Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Wyoming – do not have hate crimes laws). 6. To clarify, hate speech is considered to be merely words targeting another group of people based on their ethnicity, religion, etc., whereas hate crimes can be any number of ordinary crimes which were committed with “hateful” intent or animus towards a particular group of individuals. See Hate Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. § 249 (2012) (taking already existing crimes and enhancing them due to intent involving actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability). 7. See Glenn C. Loury, An American Tragedy: The Legacy of Slavery Lingers in our Cities’ Ghettos, BROOKINGS (Mar. 1, 1998) (describing the effect of institutional slavery on future 2019] RETHINKING THE U.S. POSITION ON HATE SPEECH 415 resolve race relation issues through the Reconstruction Movement ended with little success.8 Irish immigrants coming to the U.S. during the potato famine did not receive a warm welcome from already established communities, and neither did Italian, Slavic, Jewish, or Chinese immigrants in the early 1900s.9 Given the tolerance of white supremacist ideals and anti-immigrant notions of these ever-increasing hate groups in the Supreme Court decisions, as well as many other instances not listed above,10 it is no wonder that hate speech and racial prejudice persists.11 Specifically, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 917 hate groups are currently active in the U.S., an perspectives), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/an-american-tragedy-the-legacy-of-slavery-ling ers-in-our-cities-ghettos/. 8. See generally CHUNGCHAN GAO, AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA (Graham Russell Hodges ed., Routledge 2016) (2000); BETTYE STROUD & VIRGINIA SCHOMP, THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA (Joyce Stanton ed., 2007); Jamelle Bouie & Rebecca Onion, Introducing Reconstruction, SLATE (Oct. 27, 2017, 5:56 AM), http://www.slate.com/articles/life/reconstruction /2017/10/the_reconstruction_era_and_its_failure_is_the_subject_of_our_new_slate_academy.ht ml; Annette Gordon-Reed, What If Reconstruction Hadn’t Failed?, ATLANTIC (Oct. 26, 2015), https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/what-if-reconstruction-hadnt-failed/4122 19/; Reconstruction, HISTORY (Oct. 29, 2009), http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/ reconstruction. 9. See generally JOSEPH P. COSCO, IMAGINING ITALIANS (Fred L. Gardaphe ed., 2003) (looking to the racial disparity of Italian immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries); STEVE GARNER, RACISM IN THE IRISH EXPERIENCE (2004) (exploring the historical development of the Irish community both as an outsider to the U.S. and as a part of the general population); David Roediger, Forward to MATTHEW FRYE JACOBSON, SPECIAL SORROWS (2002) (viewing how the Irish, Polish, and Jewish communities faced their own diasporas within the U.S., and how the general populace was late to accepting them as part of the citizenry); ERIKA LEE, AT AMERICA’S GATES: CHINESE IMMIGRATION DURING THE EXCLUSION ERA, 1882-1943 (2003); DAVID R. ROEDIGER, WORKING TOWARD WHITENESS: HOW AMERICA’S IMMIGRANTS BECAME WHITE: THE STRANGE JOURNEY FROM ELLIS ISLAND TO THE SUBURBS (2005) (explaining the development of accepting immigrating ethnicities as a part of the white majority). 10. See, e.g., KAMBIZ GHANEABASSIRI, ISLAMOPHOBIA AND AMERICAN HISTORY 53-74 (Carl Ernest ed., 2013); MICHAEL K. SULLIVAN, SEXUAL MINORITIES: DISCRIMINATION, CHALLENGES AND DEVELOPMENT IN AMERICA (Michael Sullivan, ed., 2013); Talia Nelson, Historical and Contemporary American Indian Injustices: The Ensuing Psychological Effects (May 2011) (unpublished thesis, University of Massachusetts – Amherst), http://scholarworks.umass.edu /cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=chc_theses; George J. Sanchez, Face the Nation: Race, Immigration, and the Rise of Nativism in Late Twentieth Century America, 31 INT’L MIGRATION REV. 1009 (1997) (looking to the issues of race relations and discrimination among immigrating Asian and Latino communities in the U.S.). 11. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be considered a government effort against discrimination, it fell short of its goals and was by no means uniformly accepted among Congress and other representatives. See Katherine Tate & Gloria J. Hampton, Changing Hearts and Minds, in LEGACIES OF THE 1964 CIVIL RIGHTS ACT 167, 184 (Bernard Grofman ed., 2000); JOHN D. SKRENTNY, AFTER CIVIL RIGHTS: RACIAL REALISM IN THE NEW AMERICAN WORKPLACE (2014); Adam Sanchez, What Happened to the Civil Rights Movement After 1965? Don’t Ask Your Textbook, HUFFPOST (June 15, 2016, 11:28 AM), https://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-zinn-educa tion-project/what-happened-to-the-civi_b_10457322.html.