Stretching to Make a Point: The Case of Hate Speech Against Whites
Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic · 2019
This chapter considers various celebrated hoaxes such as the Tawanna Brawley case, various university cases in which minority students were accused of perpetrating their own hate crimes, and the alleged black church-burnings hoax. Hate speech directed at individual whites typically arises in situations where an angry speaker of color victimizes an “innocent” white or challenges a white person he or she believes guilty of disrespect or racism. Racial hoaxes occur when a person wrongfully accuses someone of another race of committing an actual or fabricated crime. Blacks and other minorities would be guilty of hate speech when they lash out at the white majority simply for being white, either one-on-one or in more general attacks by those in a position to reach a large audience such as politicians, black nationalists, rap artists, or writers. The factors that distinguish black from white racism also tend to reduce the harms of minority hate speech.