Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution

by Elie Mystal

Constitutional protections of speech are mainly concerned with the government’s attempts to silence or punish views the ruling party doesn’t like. The Constitution cares about people limiting the inquiry of a free press through lawsuits or the threat of lawsuits. It cares about armed agents of the state threatening or jailing citizens who dare to protest the actions of that state. In short, the First Amendment cares about the things Republicans do when they control the government. Protest against the government is at the heart of why the First Amendment exists in the first place. Political speech against the government, speaking truth to power, is the speech that is given the most robust legal protection. But the people who make a living decrying cancel culture rarely lift a pen or hashtag when Republicans use the powers of the state to chill political protests. In fact, they do the opposite: those who claim to care about cancel culture treat political protest as the thing that threatens freedom of speech. They claim their freedoms are being threatened by the very thing the First Amendment is designed to protect.