Justifying Another’s Suppressed Prejudice: Racist Speech and Freedom of Expression

Abstract

Anti-Black prejudice is generally socially unacceptable to express, and people meet harsh punishments for expressing it. A common theme in the news and on social media in response to these punishments is that they violate the expresser’s right to freedom of speech. Seven studies investigate my hypothesis that freedom of speech can be used as a justification for another’s suppressed prejudice. Study 1 examines the relationship between anti-Black prejudice and freedom of speech relevance in the context of a current event where students were punished for racist speech, while Study 2 experimentally demonstrates that this relationship only holds when the speech is anti-Black. Theories of prejudice suppression and justification have only addressed why people justify their own prejudice. Studies 3 – 7 test motivational, cognitive, and affective explanations for why people would justify another’s prejudice. I find evidence that subjective standards about what constitutes offensive speech (Study 6) and felt anger toward the suppressor (Study 7) explain this phenomenon, but no evidence that the justification is driven by a threat to the justifier’s self-integrity (Studies 3 – 5).