ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the victim's story of the effects of racist hate messages. It focuses on the phenomenology of racism, it includes a discussion of the closely related phenomenon of anti-Semitism. Racist hate messages are rapidly increasing and are widely distributed in this country through a variety of low and high technologies, including anonymous phone calls and letters, posters, books, magazines and pamphlets, cable television, recorded phone messages, computer networks, bulk mail, graffiti, and leafleting. Victims are restricted in their personal freedom. Critical race theory uses the experience of subordination to offer a phenomenology of race and law. The victims' experience reminds us that the harm of racist hate messages is a real harm to real people. The chapter also focuses on a conversation about the first amendment that acknowledges both the civil libertarian's fear of tyranny and the victims' experience of loss of liberty in a society that tolerates racist speech.
