Abstract
Is Free Speech Racist? by Gavan Titley, is an interdisciplinary exploration into the term, concept, and meaning of free speech. Drawing primarily from media and cultural studies as well as the social sciences, Titley grapples with the entanglements and intersections between racism and free speech and examines the epistemological underpinnings and operationalization of free speech in a “postracial” society. Titley’s examples for investigation are culled from seemingly disparate yet germane sites, ranging from analysis of social media platforms and trends to current events in different pockets of the globe.
In a timely undertaking, Titley pushes against contemporary and often reductive popular, legal, and political conceptions of free speech as always being in a perceived position of limitation and precarity. Advocating for a more expansive and complicated conversation around the meaning, understanding, and purpose of free speech as it relates to the operationalization of racism, Titley (2020:1) sets forth to explore why racism, in particular, has become so disproportionately integrated into these intense debates about the status and remit of freedom of speech, debates that are conducted in societies characterized not only by endless speech, but by a dominant if insanely disputed sense that racism is largely a problem that has been overcome.
Contending with the meaning of free speech, Titley questions how conceptions, deployments, and considerations of free speech are subject to time, place, and space, and that the intersections of racism and free speech must be given special consideration in a paradoxical world that claims to be postracial while concurrently fixated on race and racism.
The crux of Chapter 1, “Debating Racism, Disputing Speech,” boldly suggests that freedom of speech “acts as a focal point for advancing antagonistic visions of who constitutes the public and what values should guide public discourse (2020:3). Tackling freedom of speech in the context of liberalism, Titley asserts that the “dismantling of white supremacist rule was not secured through a free exchange of ideas” (2020:4) and that calls for protections of the sanctity of freedom of speech as imagined within the confines of liberalism seems to be deployed for the inclusion and/or promotion of ideas borne of the white imagination. This liberal conception of a “marketplace of ideas” has firm roots in the structure of what Cedric Robinson would identify as [racial] capitalism, and Titley posits that the marketplace of ideas is predicated on the notion that competition will foster better ideas and that the best ideas will win. Liberal logic dictates this will result in racism being “defeated” in the marketplace of ideas because, well, it is a bad idea.
Part of the problem here, according to Titley, is that racism is being understood as consisting primarily of ideas and ideology, divorced from a larger historical context and understanding. Racist ideas are being treated merely as ideas—worthy of discussion, exploration, and amplification and this is being propagated by postracial conceptions of free speech, resulting in minoritized folks being positioned in places of needing to “debate [their] humanity” (2020:8). The result is free speech being “adopted as a primary mechanism for validating, amplifying, and reanimating racist ideas and racializing claims” (2020:12).
The rest of the book is divided into three chapters which systematically examine how racism is animated through free speech rhetoric and politics and the implications of this for imaginations of freedom of speech (2020:22). This analysis is framed by three dimensions: closure, culture, and capture. Chapter 2, “Closure: who decides what is racist?” focuses on the dynamics of postracial discourses and how these contestations in relation to racism engender free speech controversies (2020:27). Focusing on the conflict centered on closure, Titley suggests that in this “postracial” landscape all ideas are theoretically subject to discussion and debate. However, in practice, White hegemonic norms govern the operationalization of free speech in public spaces. This concept of closure results in the denunciation of present racism while discouraging a dialogue of racism from the vantage point of what sociologist Simone Browne would call “the historical present” refusing “closure on what racism really means” (2020:38).
Chapter 3, “Culture: who values free speech?” examines the relationship between freedom of speech as a cultural value and access pass to Americanism and Americanness, and effectively to whiteness, through a case study analysis of Islamophobia in the United States. Free speech then becomes about inclusion and exclusion—if one values free speech, one is integrated and values Americanness. Whiteness, Americanness, and free speech are then intricately linked, with freedom of speech really being about “who can speak, who can be heard, and who is listened to (2020:68).”
In the final chapter, “Capture: what is free speech being claimed for?” Titley assesses why the capture of free speech has been monopolized and operationalized by the far right, as well as how free speech animates and amplifies racism. In other words, Titley is examining the purpose of free speech here and asserts that freedom of speech has a critical role in far right politics and the reproduction and sustainability of racism, with freedom of speech determining the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion along racial lines in a nation state, citing Brexit as an example.
Titley writes with an analytical and interrogative eye toward one of democracy’s most professed values and tenets—free speech. Clawing his way beneath the surface of popular political rhetoric, Titley implores his audience to reconsider how they understand free speech and its implications. Is Free Speech Racist? proves a useful text for students of politics, philosophy, sociology, and media and cultural studies alike. There is something to be gleaned for those in the humanities and social sciences as this text serves as a good primer for students in introductory courses or scholars looking to further their knowledge on what exactly constitutes free speech and why, how it is understood, and who gets to use—or weaponize it.