Online hate speech: Difficult to police … and define

by Theresa Howard, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2009-09-30-hate-speech_N.htm

NEW YORK — As the real world grows more tolerant of differences, the virtual world grows with hatred.

Complaints against groups on social networking sites that call for threats, violence and hatred toward people who are Jewish, black, gay or have disabilities are on the rise as Americans celebrate the 19th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the country rallies around its first black president, and gay marriage is legalized in some states.

An application on Facebook asks people to answer a quiz so they can see what “famous retard” they are most like. A Maryland police officer hosts a site with more than 100,000 members that tells people to “Stop breaking the law, retard.” In July, a YouTube video hosted by “ExecutetheGays1″ provided graphic suggestions about how to kill homosexuals. The site was taken down after five days.

The Anti-Defamation League, which monitors hate speech on the Web, says complaints are up this year more than 200% through July, to 1,512 complaints.”This whole era of cyberhate is one of the biggest challenges we face,” says Deborah Lauter, civil rights director of the league. “We’ve gotten to a place where we made it unacceptable for haters to hate in the public space.” So they turn to the Web, where they can be anonymous.

An offensive word all over the web

Hannah Jacobs, 53, a New York mother of two, didn’t know there was so much hatred on the Web about children with disabilities until a recent dinner, when a man sitting next to her used the word “retard.”

“I felt like I was kicked in the stomach,” says Jacobs, a former vice president for Christie’s auction house. She quit her job 10 years ago when she and her husband confirmed that their daughter, Molly, 12, was cognitively impaired. “I went home and Googled the word.”

She found hundreds of user groups with the word in it, especially on Facebook. So she started her own group challenging Facebook to “stop mocking people with disabilities.” It now has 28,000 members.

Jacobs spends about 20 hours a week combing the Web for such sites. When she finds them, she tries to contact the organizers to ask them to take the site down or change the name. Her group members write letters to government officials and to media companies that operate the sites.

“It takes a lot of work,” Jacobs says. “The goal is that once these groups are reported that Facebook take them down. I try to make the world a better place for Molly.”

But making the virtual world better is a challenge. Facebook takes a long time to respond, and hundreds of groups with the word “retard” remain, she says.

But is it ‘hate speech’?

Facebook sees it differently. Spokesman Simon Axter says complaints about nudity, pornography and harassing personal messages are responded to in 24 hours, but other sites require more scrutiny, and use of the word “retard” isn’t considered hate speech. “Our team has had a lot of discussion about … what is hate speech and where Facebook should be drawing the line,” he says. “The mere use of the word ‘retard’ is not a violation of terms of use.”

And it’s not a violation for YouTube or Google. But YouTube has created an online safety center in conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League; it explains the effect of hate speech and lets people flag offending sites and videos.

“We don’t permit hate speech,” says Scott Rubin, head of global communications and public affairs for Google and YouTube. “What we mean by hate speech is that it attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status and sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Though sites may include offensive words, content is considered hate speech only if comments or videos target a person simply because of his or her membership in a certain group. “There are 20 hours of video uploaded to our site every minute. We don’t prescreen,” Rubin says. “Instead, we count on our community to know the guidelines and to flag videos that they believe violate guidelines.”

In the end, positive speech is the best way to drown out hate speech, says free-speech expert Adam Thierer.

“When advocacy groups work together and use the new technology at their disposal, they have a way of signaling out bad speech and bad ideas,” says Thierer, a senior fellow with the Progress and Freedom Foundation. “The Internet is a cultural bazaar. It’s the place to find the best and worst of all human elements on display.”

Hannah Jacobs’ group on Facebook may be found here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=63516216741 or on Twitter: http://twitter.com/missionmom1

Once a regularly dished insult, efforts to brand the word “retarded” as unacceptable are starting to see success.

http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2009/09/09/retarded/4858/

“I’m going to make an effort to stop using these words even though I seldom do. Just as a matter of respect.”

http://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/20660150.aspx

NPR story revisits the issue of the r-word and respect.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112479383

LANGUAGE: Respect is the new r-word

August 25, 2009,  by JOEL T. HELFRICH, ROCHESTER

The Black Eyed Peas riffed “Let’s get retarded” in what is possibly their most famous song. By using the r-word, Black Eyes Peas suggest that “retarded” means stupid. In fact, people have used the r-word for years to mean something that is backwards or people who act stupidly or crazily.

With the recent death of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics, as well as the use of the r-word by a Monroe County legislator, it is time to look again at this word and its possible retirement.

Continue reading:
http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/news/letters/2009/08/LANGUAGE-Respect-is-the-new-r-word

Disability rights center accepts apology over ‘r’ word utterance

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20090813/NEWS01/908130330/1002/NEWS

Jill Terreri
Staff writer

The Center for Disability Rights will accept Majority Leader Dan Quatro’s apology on behalf of the majority Republican caucus, made to reporters after Tuesday evening’s legislature meeting.

Director of Advocacy Chris Hilderbrant said the center reached out to Quatro on Wednesday and plans to speak with him about sensitivity training for legislators and to ensure that county documents include language that is not disrespectful to people with disabilities.

On Tuesday, a group of people with disabilities and their advocates packed the legislature chambers in response to the use of the word “retard” by a lawmaker during a legislature meeting July 14.

Twenty-six people addressed the chamber, many of whom have physical or developmental disabilities.

After the meeting, when they had left, Quatro spoke to reporters.

“I will apologize as majority leader,” he said.

Quatro has denied using the slur and said that he doesn’t think it’s important to find out who said it. He has also said the members of his caucus receive sensitivity training at work and that more training isn’t necessary.

The remark was not audible to others in the chamber but was picked up by a microphone and can be heard in a video recording of the meeting.

SHRIVER: There’s a simple, low-cost way to honor founder of Special Olympics

DAVID DROGE; Tacoma
Published: 08/17/09

How can we honor the memory of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, whose Special Olympics helped reveal the capabilities of people who are intellectually disabled? One simple, no-cost way would be to stop using the word “retard” or the phrase “That’s so retarded” in everyday conversation.

No legislation is necessary; no speech police need to be called. Please just do it. And thank you in advance.

Disability One Step Closer To Getting Hate Crimes Protections
Crimes committed against a person based on their disability would receive federal hate crimes protections under a measure passed by the Senate.

Article at Disability Scoop: http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2009/07/17/hate-crimes-2/4173/

Associated Press – June 1, 2009 5:24 PM ET

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) – Alabama has dropped the phrase “mental retardation” from the official title of the state agency that assists the mentally ill and disabled.

The Alabama Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation is now the Department of Mental Health on its Web page. The Legislature this year approved a measure dropping the phrase, and Gov. Bob Riley signed the bill May 14.

Commissioner John Houston said the department welcomed the change because the old terminology carries a stigma.

The department renamed its Division of Mental Retardation Services to the Division of Intellectual Disability Services last year. But it took legislation to change the name since the agency was named in state law.

The legislation also replaces references to “mentally retarded” with “people with an intellectual disability.”

Bill would ban some words from state statutes

06:46 PM CDT on Wednesday, April 1, 2009

By CLARA TUMA
KVUE News
http://www.txcn.com/sharedcontent/dws/txcn/austin/stories/040109kvue_r-word-cb.93001b6b.html

A bill in the Texas Legislature would ban the words “retarded,” “disabled” and “handicapped” from all state statutes and resolutions — past and present.

Senate Bill 1395, by Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo), would require what it calls more “person first respectful” language.

The ARC of Texas, an advocacy group representing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, supports the bill because it says words like “retarded” are now used as slurs.

“The use of it has become so derogatory that it’s turned the term into something that’s hurtful and disrespectful,” said Chris Rodriguez, director of chapter services.

The ARC itself has eliminated the word “retarded” from its name. For many years, the group called itself the Association for Retarded Citizens, but now calls itself the ARC.

“As that word became more and more derogatory it was required that we change and just simply become the ARC,” Rodriguez said.

The bill would ban the use of eight terms in all state statutes and resolutions. They are: disabled, developmentally disabled, mentally disabled, mentally ill, mentally retarded, handicapped, cripple and crippled.

It would replace those terms with these: persons with disabilities, persons with developmental disabilities, persons with mental illness and persons with intellectual disabilities.