
Originally Posted by
Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie
I can't help but feel your making a political issue out of something that isn't, am i broadly sympathetic with your issue about free speech and what you call Liberal (i call regressive left, i consider myself liberal and i have very little in common with these people) trying to police language and ideas...yeah of course i hate trying to shut down an argument that way....if you had a strong argument you wouldn't need to do it.
But first of all Racism is far more than just crass abusive language, if it wasn't we wouldn't have had genocides down the thousands of years of human civilisation
And whilst language in of itself can't hurt people, if you believe you can treat someone less respectfully as a result of their race and make that race the totality of who they are you are essentially dehumanising them. And whilst yes policing language I agree is counter productive, it's equally unnecessary to make such comments in the first place.
Secondly this issue is more about civility, it's about someone not getting their own way and resorting to abuse, whether that should be a crime or not is one thing whether we want to encourage people that that's an acceptable way of getting their grievances addressed is something else and that applies to anything personally stated to the individual.
"I'm sorry you are too late to check in"
"You are a stupid fat ugly whore who no man would ever touch, it makes me feel sick just to look at you"
What exactly are you hoping for?, I'm not sure the police should get involved but in the above example I have cited, the airline company would have every right to refuse to serve you and ban you from their airline in future for insulting one of their staff.