Is This Hate Speech?

An X Post Goes Viral, Then Gets A Hate Speech Label 

Earlier this week, University of Chicago student Daniel Schmidt's post about race and crime garnered 1.2 million views on X, before its visibility was limited with a hate speech label. 

Because of that limited visibility, I can't embed his original post here, but I have posted the text of it below. Before we get to it, my post below includes the video in his original post, which was of a local news report interviewing another University of Chicago student, who managed to remove the magazine from a mugger's gun during an attack near the school. 

 [Emphasis mine]

Race And Crime In Chicago

At my college, the University of Chicago, it’s inevitable that black people will mug students at gunpoint this school year—because it happens every year. Last year more than a dozen students were mugged. One student had a gun pointed at her head while walking on campus at 3:00 PM. You may have seen the video below back in April.

I’m starting my senior year in a few days. When I began college I tried to ignore all of this... I just wanted to be a finance bro... But then an Asian student was killed by a black person one month into my freshman year and it dawned on me: Is the modern American Dream just trying to live far away from black people? That’s why investment bankers work 18-hour days? That’s the end game? That’s it?

I started thinking I shouldn’t have gone to college in Chicago. I really chose this place over Princeton, New Jersey...

But lately I’ve started asking myself: Why do I have to accept the destruction of a great institution? Why do I have to surrender it to people who want me dead? Fuck them.

John D. Rockefeller founded the University of Chicago in 1890. Since then it has produced 99 Nobel Prizes, a remarkable achievement given the school is relatively new. It’s also one of the only colleges today that sincerely protects free speech (why I can make this post without getting expelled). It’s undoubtedly the only top university that cowards haven’t co-opted. I love it dearly.

Yet nowhere else on Earth will you find such an astonishing IQ contrast within a five-minute walk. The average SAT score of a student at UChicago is 1545, the highest of any university in the country. In the past three years, two of those students have been murdered, and dozens have been mugged, by thugs whose IQs are too low to understand why killing someone is wrong. They act solely on impulse. They think it’s fun. That’s all it is.

What will happen as black crime invariably gets even worse? Will the kind of student needed to continue UChicago’s legacy of academic excellence even want to attend college in Chicago? As things stand, this is an institution headed toward its deathbed, and that makes me very sad.

I’m so tired of this. I want to ride a subway without worrying a black person will shoot me. I want to go on a date with a girl at night without worrying a black person will shoot us. I want my future children to be able to live in cities without worrying a black person will shoot them.

I was born in 2003—you cannot get me to genuinely care about slavery, or redlining, or any other past event that is supposed to force me into accepting third-world conditions as the norm for American cities. It seems the only solution is the most obvious: over-police and over-incarcerate. Bring in the National Guard. Spend $$$ on maximum police surveillance. Do whatever is necessary to make these cities safe again. Each day passed is another victim.

The problem, of course, is that we cannot arrive at that solution right now because of the fear of being called racist. I’ve seen this firsthand.

At UChicago, a left-wing group called CareNotCops routinely bullies students and professors alike from speaking out by throwing around that word. When I was a freshman and a black person murdered an Asian student, hundreds of international students wanted to organize a protest to demand more police. They felt these criminals targeted them the most. In response, CareNotCops immediately called them racist, and the demands were dropped.

This led me to realize that “racist” is a branding weaponized by the most spiteful in society to overwhelm good-hearted people with fear and forbid a brighter future. Nothing has held back progress more than the anxiety of that label. Only once we end our enslavement to that meaningless word can lives be saved.

Courageously addressing this issue would unleash a profound sense of hope that has been extinct for decades. Countless young people currently feel the situation is hopeless. They have been gaslit into believing that rampant crime is an inseparable part of city life. If they haven’t been mugged or attacked, they certainly know someone who has. They recognize these cities have fallen and the worst people in society have won.

There’s something so sinister about this mindset that has been programmed into young people, making them question not just the future of this country but the ability of civilization to triumph against depravity. “We can explore outer space, but we can’t stop black people from mugging you,” college students are taught earnestly. It’s as if our institutions want young people to eternally remain in a subdued state of decadence, demoralization, and death.

Restoring America’s great cities would usher in a renaissance—it just requires courage. It would lead to cheaper and cleaner neighborhoods, peaceful public transportation, safe schools that promote excellence, a generation of optimism that would energize innovations, and a surge in happiness, friendship, and love. Above all, it would mark our liberation from the incessant guilt-tripping about the past. There is nothing we cannot achieve from that point forward.

I really hope this becomes a reality in my lifetime. I’ll do my best to help.

If you'd like to stay in touch 

You can follow Daniel Schmidt on X here, and visit his LinkedIn profile here. 

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