Hate Speech on Campus: How Student Leaders of Color Respond
Liliana M. Garcés, Evelyn Ambríz, Brianna Davis Johnson, Dwuana Bradley
Abstract
The spike of hate speech incidents on college campuses since the 2016 U.S. presidential election has compounded the racial hostility students of color face on historically White campuses. These ongoing incidents require institutions to respond purposively to address the harm students of color experience in their aftermath. Using an "inclusive freedom" framework that connects freedom of expression with goals of inclusion, we employ an embedded single-case study of 28 student leaders of color to examine how they responded to hate speech in light of insufficient institutional action. Findings illustrate how student leaders of color bolster inclusion by leveraging their freedom of expression following hate speech incidents. Through efforts that were taxing and left them feeling drained, students generated affinity spaces and fostered dialogue about the negative impacts of hate speech on campus. Their experiences illuminate how institutions can more deliberately promote principles of inclusion and freedom of expression in their responses to hate speech within legal boundaries. These intentional efforts require an antiracist approach to inclusion that attends to the systemic factors that foster hate speech in the first place and to the deleterious consequences for students of color when they encounter hate speech on campus.