Oh you have no idea. I was walking through super-liberal downtown San Francisco a few years ago with my wife (I'm caucasian, she's asian) when some officious-looking guy walked up to me and said 'I'm going to have to issue you a warning' like he was giving me a traffic ticket.
I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly and was about to cross the street so I did that and then looked at the piece of paper, expecting maybe some some religious admonition. Instead it was a fake legal document saying I'd been identified as a 'race traitor.'
Speech like this is arguably not constitutionally protected by the first amendment, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary. But breaches of the peace have to be enforced by the police; there is no private right of action. This leads to obvious problems where ethnic minorities or members of other protected classes are subject to abuse and local authorities are unsympathetic, a tension reflected in the state/federal legal divide.
I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly and was about to cross the street so I did that and then looked at the piece of paper, expecting maybe some some religious admonition. Instead it was a fake legal document saying I'd been identified as a 'race traitor.'
Speech like this is arguably not constitutionally protected by the first amendment, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary. But breaches of the peace have to be enforced by the police; there is no private right of action. This leads to obvious problems where ethnic minorities or members of other protected classes are subject to abuse and local authorities are unsympathetic, a tension reflected in the state/federal legal divide.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/fighting-words/