In his book, The Harm in Hate Speech, Jeremy Waldron defines the concept of dignity as an individual’s “social standing, the fundamentals of basic reputation that entitle them to be treated as equals in the ordinary operations of society” (Waldron, 5). It is an essential part of maintaining the ability to be an active member of society. Hate speech is designed to get rid of it. Dignity is incredibly malleable and easily taken away through language. Without dignity, one loses what Waldron describes as assurance, or confirmation of secure social standing. The relationship between dignity, assurance, and language can also be seen in Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard, where Trethewey writes several poems based on hate speech she and her family faced…show more content… Waldron and Trethewey each make the overall goal of hate speech clear throughout their writing. The only key difference here is their approaches to explaining this point: Waldron uses statistical and/or political data to do so, while Trethewey writes poetry about her actual experiences as a biracial woman in America. There is an ongoing argument against the effects of hate speech that believes it’s just a sense of humor, and that those who are the targets of hate speech are too soft. Waldron actually brings this up early on in The Harm in Hate Speech, where he quotes author and journalist Anthony Lewis as claiming that, “even a sense of humor seemed endangered” (Lewis, 163). Many people believe that hate speech laws and regulations are an attack on comedy and/or free speech as a whole. Waldron refutes this belief at several points in his writing, notably in chapter 4 where he looks at why this viewpoint is incorrect and why it misunderstands what exactly hate speech is. He explains that it is not “just autonomous self-expression. [the] point is to negate the implicit assurance that a society offers to members of vulnerable groups” (Waldron,
