Where Can We Draw The Line?

When does the right to freedom of speech become a burden? In American society, the right to free speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of expression are assumed from birth. As Americans, these rights are entitled to each and every one of us, but is there a limit? If citizens have an issue, protests and rallies are an effective way to get their voices heard. Many situations can allow freedom of speech but can a line be drawn on an entitled right?

Freedom of speech happens to be one of the major issues being tackled by the US Supreme Court this term. While Albert Snyder mourned at his son Mathew Snyder’s funeral, a Marine Lave Corporal who was killed in Iraq in 2006, he was further victimized by members of a local Kansa Baptist church as they protested at the funeral.

Protesters held signs that said things like “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” while wearing shirts with the phrase “God Hates Fags” printed across the front. This kind of behavior is atrocious especially coming from a religious group. Where is the compassion for others? Where is the tolerance that religion promotes? A man was killed as a part of a collective effort to protect people like them, to keep them safe. Even though they might not have agreed with his lifestyle, the way they showed their opinions was tactless, distasteful, immoral, and not to mention it didn’t portray them as the Christians they would like to be seen as. Albert Snyder sued the Reverend Fred W. Phelps and his followers for intentional infliction of emotional distress and was awarded $5 million but the decision was overturned. The courts ruled that the church was covered by their 1^st amendment right to freedom of speech. Snyder claims, “This is not freedom of speech, this is targeted harassment.” With this I completely agree.

Sue.Me.

Commentary by Kendra Mells


"Freedom Ain't Free"

Freedom of Speech. Freedom to Assemble. Freedom of expression. Free. Free. FREE. These so-called "civil rights" are constantly being debated in modern day society to the point where they should be deemed "civil sources of unrest". The bottom line is, our American government has arranged for its citizens to be granted certain rights- BUT -it is the duty of both the governement and the citizens to ensure that these sensitive civil rights are enforced in such a manner as to not place the rights of any citizen over the rights of another. In fact, the above argument is making appeals to the prejudices of tehe people, rather than the actual situation at hand. Sound complicated? Exactly my point.

Each citizen realizes that he or she is granted these rights, but the government must make sure that the citizens knows that these rights stretch only as far as they can without infringing on the rights of another citizen. True, it was morally wrong of the protestors to infringe on the funeral of Snyder's son, but exactly which civil right of Snyder's did the protestors infringe on? Did they infringe on any rights at all? If no, then surely the courts were justified in overturning the suit, but if yes, then Snyder's award was completely justifiable. The true dilemma at hand, though, is not whether or not morals were in action with either party- it is instead whether not official civil rights were being violated by any party. As much as we all want for the good guys to win all the time, sometimes good or bad is not the issue at hand. Sometimes, the bad guys win, regardless of their moral standings. In other words, of course a line can be drawn on civil rights- it must be drawn to ensure that everyone is granted their rights. That, my friends, is the beauty of democracy!

Hide Ya Kids, Hide Ya Wives

You've all seen it before: any time African Americans must appear on the news, the news anchor seems to find the most ignorant, badly-dressed, incorrect-grammar-speaking African American to blast their story across the 6pm nightly. While everyone deserves their five minutes of fame, I find it personally disturbing when I see African Americans being "ignant" on national television, or any television for that matter; it is truly embarrassing for us as a people...but the fact that society finds it so entertaining makes me wonder: Do news stations intentionally pick out these particular African Americans to broadcast? Or is it happening simply by chance?

The Antoine Dodson story is probably the most embarrassing incident of a display of recent African American ignorance. The story behind Antoine Dodson is that someone broke into his sister's house attempting to rape her, but the public ignored the fact that Dodson's sister was almost raped, and instead focused on Dodson, who was rather "flamboyantly feminine" and made a mockery of him. Dodson's acclaimed fame came as a result of this, and although he may have enjoyed it, I wonder whether or not Dodson's extensive media coverage was intentional as to make a mockery of him or not? Second, I wonder why Dodson allowed this to happen? And third, I wonder if the rest of African American society feels as embarrassed as I do about Dodson's portrayal in the media?

While Dodson is only one example, there are many others and the question at hand is: Why? Why are there rarely any educated, grammatically-correct African Americans featured in our news story? And why do we allow these stories to cover our people, knowing that we'll be made a mockery of? Unfortunately, this is the embarrassment of being black, so while Dodson was made a mockery of, maybe we really should consider "hiding our kids, hiding our wives, and hiding our husbands too" because the media is making a mockery of our people, and we are standing by, allowing it to happen. When will the embarrassment end?

Kendra Mells
                                           


It is indeed true that the media offers everyone five minutes of fame, however it is certainly each person's own choice to stand in front of the news cameras and be apart of  interviews that could possibly portray them as ingorant or highly intelligent. No one forces those people to become apart of those interviews and even when they conduct those interviews, they always have the option of changing their voices and other effects. To simply say that the media intentionally chooses ignorant and uneducated Black people to represent the entire Black community is a fallacy we like to call hasty generaliztion.

As a viewer of the news, I will admit that you often times are forced to see the blatantly uneducated, poorly dressed and down right ignorant image of Black people, however it is not the only image that the news broadcasts. Of course the first person that comes to mind when you think about positive Black people on the news would be President Obama and his inauguration; but for more common people, I can remember myself as well as about forty five other students from my high school being on the news because we raised a quarter of a million dollars to travel to Egypt, Africa.

All of this is to say that though you often times find yourself seeing very poor images of Black people in the media; if you very carefully, you will find that there are some positive images of Black people.

Commentary by: Khyajuanna Cooksey