Understanding Words That Wound (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Jean Stefancic (Author)

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Product Description

Successor and companion volume to Words that Wound, the first book to argue for recognition of hate speech as a serious social problem. The current volume greatly expands the coverage of hate speech, including chapters on children, the Internet, recent cases, campus hate speech codes, and international responses. Deals expressly with arguments against hate-speech regulation, as well as the case for it. Written by leading critical race theorists Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, this volume succinctly explores a host of issues presented by hate speech, including legal theories for regulating it, the harms it causes, and policy arguments pro and con suppressing it. Chapters analyze hate speech on campus, the history of hate speech in America, the careers of particular words as "nigger," "spick," "wop," and "kike," hate speech against whites, and the special case of children. Particular attention is devoted to hate on the Internet, talk radio, and to the role of white supremacist groups in disseminating it. Designed to be accessible to the general public and students, this book features reading lists, exercises, and questions for discussion. This book accompanies and expands on the prize-winning volume Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment, also published by Westview Press.

About the Author

Richard Delgado is the Derrick A. Bell Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of When Equality Ends (Westview Press), The Rodrigo Chronicles, and The Coming Race War? And Other Apocalyptic Tales of America After Affirmative Action and Welfare. Delgado is the winner of eight national book awards and is a frequent television and newspaper commentator on race and civil rights. Jean Stefancic is research professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh Law School and Derrick A. Bell Scholar in Law. She is the author of No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America's Social Agenda, and a frequent contributor to the literature on race and civil rights.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (February 19, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081334140X
• ISBN-13: 978-0813341408
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #6,196,382 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "LOVE" or "HATE" -- Devil Worship Condones Both on Hands., June 26, 2005

By	Betty Burks "Betty Burks" (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding Words That Wound (Paperback)

Hate words are not primarily racial jokes, slurs, or mean "comments" (that seems to be a pattern), there are nasty words used against whites as well. 'Spik,' 'kike,' 'wop,' 'dummy,' 'idiot,' 'Polock' all cause extreme mental and emotional hurt. Of course, we all all familiar with the N word, but the blacks use it the most to describe one of their own who won't do right, 'nigger.'

The play, 'Green Grow the Lilacs,' which was turned into the musical, "Oklahoma!, was spiked full of the N word, as were many of Mark Twain stories and nothing was said about "hate" or racial slurs. These were literary works and thus immune.

In the town of Skokie, Illinois, outside Chicago, where many Jewish people live, there was a Nazi march showing swastikas and Nazi uniforms (probably used the Nazi salute, as do the KKK groups, a lot of which are from Chicago and places unknown). The KKK do not go to predominantly black towns to show their allegiance to our right of being a white country. At least, we started out that way, then the blacks multiplied staring from the age when a girl had her first period so that her mother could draw welfare on the illigetimate child, over and over and over. Now, there are more of them than us; the joke is that the Latinos have infiltrated this country and they are the majority!

Hate speech is not merely unpleasant or offensive. Sometimes it can be the truth couched in words not at all offensive, the truth finally being brought to the attention of anyone who will listen.

Bigots suffer when their narrow, categorical thinking and expressions etches a little deeper. If you observe the way blacks treat the whites they think are dominant, you will understand why there are more of us speaking out -- and will continue to. They take care of their own to the detriment of the rights of others, because they are the wrong color. It happens here in Knoxville, Tennessee, every day with the bus system. Racial abuse can come from either or both sides. It's not the whites now doing the abusing; the blacks have been put into positions to take their hate out on little old ladies who are just the wrong color. They use the worst language and have nasty minds and mouths. They don't care who they hurt.

So, to conclude, the blacks are not being abused. The Jews are not being abused. The tables have been turned, and now the whites are suffering for a few bad speakers and the elderly are fair game to hurt and harm in any way they can.

Written by racial theorists, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancie from the University of Pittsburgh, it explores a host of issues but not from the viewpoint of the person being abused. The abusers are never punished. They don't lose their jobs. They are not reprimanded. Free speech has turned into hate speech because the person doing the talking has been abused by the other group repeatedly. And nothing is done!