Many of the opponents of the action taken against Gov. Jan Brewer are quick to raise the issue of support for free speech, as if free speech existed in a legal vacuum separate from the social norms and pressures by those who wished to exercise that right. Within those oppressed groups that feel the racist pressures meant to silence them, social forces cannot soon be forgotten.
Certainly, it is a privilege of the white race to forget the intersection of race and the exercise of our legal rights.
However, when racism is allowed to spread unchecked, it will inevitably deprive those racial minorities of the de facto right of free speech, even if the de jure right is preserved.
Brewer’s actions go beyond merely spreading racist rhetoric, however. SB 1070 degrades an entire group of people and codifies white privilege. The “reasonable suspicion” provision, allowing police to detain a person upon suspicion of being an “illegal immigrant,” creates an entire class of suspects based on the color of their skin or the language they speak. (The term “illegal immigrant” degrades a person into a felony.)
A separate ban of ethnic studies in Arizona public schools has deprived Arizona Latinos of the chance to learn their own heritage in schools, a privilege currently enjoyed by white students in that state.
Certainly both of these policies exacerbate the struggle felt by Latinos in Arizona, and both act as a means of reinforcing the notion that whites can decide for Latinos how they are to exercise their speech and that Latinos are to be held in suspicion.
This will undoubtedly lead to a chilling effect on those who may be detained by police, and a silencing effect on those who feel the social pressure to remain silent, lest they be caught speaking a socially unacceptable language or show socially unacceptable comfort with their own identity.
Free speech cannot coexist with racism. When the oppressors are allowed to spread their message of hate, the oppressed are silenced.
Jan Brewer’s racist policies have subjected racial minorities to persecution for nothing more than being the wrong color or speaking the wrong language.
By hosting Jan Brewer at this University, we are legitimizing her rhetoric and her policies. By allowing her to justify her policies, we are tacitly admitting that there may be justice in the policies that are harmful to a whole race of people.
In her speech, Brewer stated that she was “fighting against the tyranny of the Obama administration.”
By showing our intolerance of her and her policies, we are fighting against the tyranny of racism and white privilege in our society that deprives its targets of the exercise of speech.
Matthew Metcalf
Class of 2012
