United Nations Urges U.S. to Give Up Free Expression to Combat Racism

davidnx (53)in #news • 7 years ago

I'm sure that many people around the world have something to which they disagree with about the way the USA does certain things, but many will agree that one thing that stands out about it is its stance on freedom as written in the constitution. Many of the freedoms may have been whittled away to some extent, but the USA is still the beacon for others to be reassured by.

Now, the UN is weighing in and seemingly wants to destroy one of the great 'institutions' of the US - the right to free speech.

This paragraph from the article says it all:

But the warning and call for the U.S. government to act contained a little-noticed last paragraph, urging the U.S. to make sure that the “rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly” are not exercised to deny rights or freedom to others and pressing the U.S. government to “ensure that such rights are not misused to promote racist hate speech and racist crimes.”

My questions are, what is hate speech? What is racism? Who will define these questions. On some college campuses in the US, students are being taught that it is not possible to be racist against whites because they have too much "privilege". In Nottingham, in the UK, any act of misogyny, for example 'wolf whistling', is recorded as a hate crime - similar acts against men by women are not!