I would love to live in a world without ignorance, one in which everyone is treated based on the content of his or her character.  Unfortunately, I do not.  

Lately it seems that the ignorant have come out of the woodwork and have laid claim to our country in a way that is simply appalling.  Most recently, racism has reared its ugly head in a private school nearby. It is offensive, it is wrong and I condemn it on every level. The private school responded by expelling the students. They have a code of conduct that makes it clear that hurtful language will not be tolerated on or off premises when it appears on social media, and the kids violated the code. It’s the end of the story.

Or is it?

There are clearly lessons to be learned and life lessons for our children from this incident but, as a parent, I am torn with exactly what to convey. There is the issue of social media.  Facebook and Instagram are social media. You post things for others to see and the entire point is for people to respond. 

Snapchat?  Not so much.  Snapchats, absent a public account, go to a select group of people whom you have chosen to engage, typically friends.  In this case, the Snapchat became public because of a screenshot, but that isn’t generally the nature of the beast.

ADVERTISEMENT

The first few messages to my kids are clear: Don’t presume that your private messages are going to be kept private. Anything that you write can be used for a different purpose, even by someone you trust. These are good life lessons. 

But to me, there is a larger question looming, one that affects all of us and one that plagues me in terms of what to say to my children: With the ability to take screen shots, does absolutely anything you write down now fall under the social media umbrella?  Given that anything can, with the snap of a photo and a simple post, become public, is there nothing that is exempt from potentially becoming social media material?  And if so, how will this eventually affect our right to freedom of speech?

One part of me thinks that I’m OK with people not being able to use derogatory terms, ever. I despise them and, in our family, we have taught our children to judge people on the content of their character.  But I also recognize that one of the things that separates our society from fascist societies is that, in the United States, we do not legislate mindset. We are able to say what we believe, and we give others the right to do so, too, even if their speech is abhorrent. It is this very freedom that came first in our Constitution, the one our founders used to speak out against injustice by the king, and it is part of what makes us Americans.  I have taught my kids this, too, because in some circumstances, our voices can be the most important tools we have to defend ourselves and others.

I am repulsed by what I am seeing in terms of freedom of speech these days, but it’s a right that I hold dear as a writer and as a citizen, not in the abstract, but in the concrete.  When we start blurring the lines between the public and the private, sliding down the slippery slope of legislating what people can and cannot say, we ultimately undermine our very right to do the same.  In the climate we live in today, it is not a risk I am willing to take. 

As we continue to discuss this incident as a family, I hope that, in addition to the lessons we have already discussed, I am also teaching my kids that this freedom, while incredibly difficult to accept at times, is one worth protecting.  

Laura K. Silver is a trustee of the Jewish Light who writes a blog for the paper’s website (stljewishlight.com/laura). Laura is married and the mother of two middle school-age children.