Kamala Harris’ pick for vice president, Tim Walz, has repeated the claim during the campaign that “there’s no guarantee to free speech.” The aspect that he targets is “hate speech.” However, the Supreme Court has stated that our constitution’s first amendment protects even hate speech. One may argue that one should not have the right to call a gay man or a black man a derogatory name, but that is not the point here. The First Amendment protects the views and opinions that our government may label as “hateful.” I’m thankful for that, for I would not be where I am today without free speech.
When I first moved to Chicago from Indiana over 20 years ago, I kept my mouth shut. Liberal politics held sway over the Black community and one did not swim against the current. I saw many things I did not like, mainly the continual reinforcement of Black dependency on the government. I saw failures in education and the job market that did not have to happen. I saw teens mapping their families around government policies. I saw far too much and I kept my mouth shut.
I feared the repercussions of speaking out. The penalty for a Black person is often higher than other Americans and that is often due to the stronghold that Black politicians and their white liberal counterparts hold over the community. I feared being delegitimized as an Uncle Tom. Look at Ralph Ellison or Shelby Steele or Thomas Sowell — smeared as Uncle Toms for speaking truth to power.
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Eventually, my resentment of the fear building up within me and my shame in looking away from the realities that I saw on the streets became too much to bear for me. When a young man born to good parents was shot and killed, I felt the nudge of God. I walked across the street from my church to the motel infested with drugs, prostitution, gamblers, and murderers and I climbed the roof in protest.
That was the moment I began to exercise my freedom of speech. I wasn’t going to take it anymore. I would begin to speak the truth. I drew my strength from the civil rights foot soldiers who used the power of free speech to illustrate the horrors of segregation and white supremacy and to argue for a more moral America.
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I didn’t stop there. A few years after raising enough funds to buy and tear down the motel, I came out as a Republican. In doing so, I broke publicly with the politics of my community. I began to speak out against the 60-plus years of liberal policies that destroyed my community.
In response, I faced death threats and had to put my family into hiding. My church was robbed. Most of all, people accused me of speaking hatred.
That is why freedom of speech is so important. Imagine if those people, some of them employed by the government, had the power to shut me down for hate speech. All I did was say these liberal policies are killing my community and that was labeled as hate speech. They did that to protect their power, their money, and their identity.
We can never allow the principle of free speech to be compromised in any way. It is the greatest principle and power that man could ever possess — just look back at the history of mankind and you will see that nearly every advance of some sort starts with man speaking his mind.
Look no further than me. I never stopped speaking since I announced that I was a Republican. Several years ago, Fox News asked if I wanted to work with them and we created the “Rooftop Revelations” series. What makes me most proud of that series is that we allowed so many people from the South Side to speak without varnish to the public. It was raw and truth. It allowed outsiders to see directly into our community and to see what the need is.
That is why, today, I am in the middle of building a $40 million Leadership and Economic Center right across the street from my church. Yes, the very same location where that motel once stood. That is the power of free speech and that is why we must never allow it to be compromised in any way. We have everything to gain from it, especially the truth that gives us the power to advance society.