Around a decade ago when my local atheist group was still relatively young and small, we would distribute a paper newsletter around town wherever people would allow us do so. Back then we didn’t have any new media presence, no podcast, no Facebook page, YouTube page, or group blog. While the newsletter wasn’t really much to look at (example) it did get the word out to the sort of people who like to read, who happen to be some of my favorite people.
The only real problem with the newsletter was that even when we received explicit permission from proprietors or librarians to post them, we would often find that copies were disappearing from the shelves in whole batches, within a day or two of being posted up. I discussed this problem with the staff at my local library, and she told me that silent censorship of controversial materials has always been a problem. I was unsurprised to find that advocating freethought is considered controversial here in the Bible Belt, but utterly disgusted to hear that freedom-loving Americans would take it into their own hands to censor objectionable materials from a designated public forum.
More than ten years have passed since I first realized that self-appointed vigilante censors were trying to protect my little town from the evil scourge of atheism, and I’ve come to accept that people of faith may well lack respect for the idea of an open marketplace of ideas. They are, after all, people of faith, and what has faith to do with free-ranging discussion? That said, I was shocked to discover that at least one prominent atheist has openly promoted a similar form of censorship, and on a University campus at that. Granted, this was a particularly nasty article, featuring a photograph of a recently deceased Trayvon Martin, the inclusion of which goes well beyond the bounds of common decency, not to mention journalistic ethics.
I’m not going to bother analyzing the article itself, but I would like to quickly suggest a few alternatives to silencing free expression when faced with speech that you find hateful or racist or otherwise problematic:
- Write the university administration to request that the publisher enjoys no official support from the university itself. Free speech does not require taxpayer funding, after all.
- Write the local newspaper a letter to the editor refuting the wrong bits and damning the immoral bits.
- Same as above, but publish the letter on your widely read blog which is supposedly about freethought.
- Start a hashtag campaign! I hear they are all the rage these days. Be sure to promote some worthy goal that does not involve vigilante censorship.
- Stage a real life protest. Tell those nasty racists exactly what you really think about them. Bring a few dozen friends and loads of pithy placards.
- Help disadvantaged people in some substantial way. For example, you can leverage anger about racism to drive donations to the NAACP.
I’m sure there are plenty of other positive things that you can do to combat racism that does not involve burning books or trashing newspapers. If you have any ideas, please leave them in the comments below.
