Unsettling Speech

This paper draws attention to a hitherto unrecognized way in which some racist and xenophobic speech can be harmful, and explores implications of these harms for potential responses to that speech. In recent years, theorists have described several distinct ways in which hateful speech can harm: e.g., by derogating targets, ranking them as inferior, enacting discriminatory norms towards them, silencing targets’ speech, and much more. In addition, I argue that racist and xenophobic speech can also harm by raising, or making live, questions that ought not be raised. Speech that does this is ‘unsettling speech’; I explain what makes speech unsettling in the relevant sense. Racist and xenophobic speech is not the only kind of unsettling speech, but it can unsettle questions in a particularly striking way. And this unsettlingness, I argue, has significant repercussions for the viability of potential responses to the speech. In particular, counter-speech – or speaking back – will generally not ‘undo’ the harms associated with unsettling, and may sometimes exacerbate those harms.