Not they are after our freedom of speech!

November 20, 2015
40% of Millennials OK with limiting speech offensive to minorities
By Jacob Poushter193 comments

American Millennials are far more likely than older generations to say the government should be able to prevent people from saying offensive statements about minority groups, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data on free speech and media across the globe.

We asked whether people believe that citizens should be able to make public statements that are offensive to minority groups, or whether the government should be able to prevent people from saying these things. Four-in-ten Millennials say the government should be able to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups, while 58% said such speech is OK.

Even though a larger share of Millennials favor allowing offensive speech against minorities, the 40% who oppose it is striking given that only around a quarter of Gen Xers (27%) and Boomers (24%) and roughly one-in-ten Silents (12%) say the government should be able to prevent such speech.

Compared with people we surveyed in dozens of nations, Americans as a whole are less likely to favor the government being able to prevent speech of any kind. The debate over what kind of speech should be tolerated in public has become a major story around the globe in recent weeks – from racial issues on many U.S. college campuses to questions about speech laws in Europe in the wake of concerns about refugees from the Middle East and the terrorist attacks in Paris.

Overall, our global survey found that a majority of Americans say that people should be able to say offensive things about minority groups publicly. Two-thirds of Americans say this, compared with a median of 35% among the 38 nations we polled.

In the U.S., our findings also show a racial divide on this question, with non-whites more likely (38%) to support government prevention of such speech than non-Hispanic whites (23%).

Nearly twice as many Democrats say the government should be able to stop speech against minorities (35%) compared with Republicans (18%). Independents, as is often the case, find themselves in the middle. One-third of all women say the government should be able to curtail speech that is offensive to minorities vs. 23% of men who say the same.

Furthermore, Americans who have a high school degree or less are more likely than those with at least a college degree to say that speech offensive to minority groups should be able to be restricted (a 9-percentage-point difference).

In Europe, where long-simmering racial tensions are of a different nature, compounded by the recent flow of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East, people are more willing than Americans to accept government controls on speech against minorities. A median of 49% across the six EU nations surveyed say this compared with 28% of Americans.

Among Europeans, there is a wide range of opinion on whether the government can prevent statements that are offensive to minorities. Seven-in-ten Germans say this should be the case (where there are clear laws against hate speech), as do 62% of Italians and half of Poles. The French are divided, with 48% saying that the government should have the ability to prevent speech that is offensive to minority groups, while 51% say people should be able to say these things publicly. In contrast, the balance of opinion in the UK and Spain is to allow people to say statements that might offend minorities.

In contrast with American Millennials, those ages 18 to 34 in Germany and Spain are more likely to say people should be able to say things offensive to minorities compared with those ages 35 and older. On the other hand, in the UK, the younger generation follows the lead of American Millennials by being less open to this form of freedom of speech and more willing to allow government restrictions. There are no significant age differences in France, Italy and Poland on this question.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...with-limiting-speech-offensive-to-minorities/

 

Thank you for having the most consistently misspelled thread titles.

Not they are after our freedom of speech!

 

Kids always replace their elders, they always have a different mindset. They see the issues in ways that old people can't. Where old people have solid biases, young people's biases are more free-flowing. In time, those kids biases will solidify, but they will not be the same biases as the previous generation's.

In other words, you're an old geezer yelling at "those damn punks" from your window while they're outside doing basically the same damn things your generation did decades ago. Deal with it the same way your mother and father did, unless you disagreed with them at one point or another in your life, of course.

 

Sorry, but "my generation" had lots of protests. Most all of them in some way were driven by trying to protect freedom of speech.

 

Bullshit. "Kids" (as you put it) already have biases. Very strong biases, by the way.

 

We can blame the corruption in scholastics going back to 1965 for the infestation of commies in this nation. How else would you explain retards like IHopeless1 and Teddy the troll?

 

Nice. But, the "progressive" infestation of our educational system started in the early part of the last century.

 

Your life is out of order. You are dysfunctional. No amount of government hand outs will help you. You are beyond hope, hence, IHopeless1. May I suggest 9 grams of Nembutal for you? It will cure you of all that ails you, 100% guaranteed!

 

He's the poster child for everything that's wrong with the welfare system.

 

You missed the fact that I said your generation did protest. You missed it because you just want to argue for argument's sake. Your cohorts agree with your comment because they too cannot understand that your comment ignores that fact.

 

Again, COKC ignores the words I wrote. I specifically stated that kids do indeed have biases, but they differ from the older generation's biases in that the older generation's biases are more solidified compared to the more fluid biases of the kid's.

 

It's clear to any honest person that the republicans above are utterly incapable of being honest themselves. Clearly they are arguing for argument's sake only, and not for any meaningful dialogue between differing political tendencies.

In short, like most republicans, they suck.

 

Did you bother to read what you quoted from me? REALLY?

 

Boy, son, kid, little creep, and whatever the hell else you are.

 

They do, and they are very suck. That comes from an Asian restaurant owner that spoke very little English that called to complain about one of the delivery drivers for a company a friend of mine works at. All he could come up with was that the drive was a "very suck". I think it applies here. Republicans are a very suck.

 

Now you're in the spirit of Partisanlines. That isn't so hard now is it?

 

Yeah, online he's a chump, offline he's still a chump. It's a certainty that he wouldn't be able to say that to me in a face-to-face meeting. I wouldn't let him lol

 

Now wait for the squawks about violence.

 

He's just a poorly educated tool. A staple of the Right-wing base. He means well, he just isn't particularly bright. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

My money's on Daniel...the toothless hag does not stand a chance.