The Language that Drinks Blood: Toni Morrison Reminds Us Hate Speech Is Violence

In Morrison’s parable, a group of young people present a blind wise woman with a bird and ask her whether it is alive or dead. The bird, Morrison explains, most convincingly signifies language: it has the potential both to connect us when carried responsibly, or to be harmed and divested of its power when not. (Source: Wordpress).

As the nation grapples with violent white supremacy and the disturbing fact that the President appears to embolden it, a debate about the connection between hateful language and violence has become a flashpoint. The conversation has become so charged that grieving without addressing it feels difficult, even dangerous.

Some believe the connection is unequivocal. To speak hatefully, especially from the pulpit of power, means that one is not only responsible for the ensuing violence that acts in its name but is an agent of it. Yet, on the other hand, there are those for whom hate-speech and the person firing gunshots in its name exist in separate, distinctive worlds. That this camp actually holds this view is evinced by the fact that, when the President spoke about the importance of creating “Unity,” this group found no contradiction. For them, anti-immigrant rhetoric, the alt-right manifesto published by the El Paso shooter, and the President’s speech calling for unity, are three distinctive — indeed, entirely unrelated — events.

Despite the fervor, neither position has won in the public’s imagination, leading to a divided nation that lacks any consensus on how hate speech is — or is not — leading to unimaginable pain, hurt, death.