Apologies for the spelling “correction.” “Sic” does not necessarily indicate a correction; it indicates only that I believe most readers would expect me to spell the word differently. Taking offence seems to be your default mode.

My point is not that the victims of racism need to read hate speech to know that racism exists and poses a danger to them. My point is that the portions of the electorate that are not victimized by racism are far more likely to believe it is present and dangerous if they can hear people advocating it.

I am leaving aside the slippery slope problem of drawing the lines around what may and may not be said. I suspect that American constitutional thinkers find Canadian restrictions on hate speech arbitrary and short-sighted. I know I do. How do you think American cops “feel” about the terrible things being said about them? Is that not “hate speech”? What principle of sound governance makes anti-Black speech bad but anti-Blue speech good? The difference is entirely a matter of popular belief. You want to vote on what can be said. If there was ever a corrupting power, that one is it.

By suppressing “hate speech” (not including incitement to violence, which is illegal as such), anti-racists suppress one of their best pieces of evidence of how prevalent racism is. That’s a tactical judgment. I can understand how you may disagree, but I think the claim is a reasonable defence of permitting all offensive speech to be spoken. Anti-Black speech matters because all speech matters. Why does that sound familiar?