As Orwell illustrated in 1984, the power in compelling speech is that, in time, thought is compelled as well. Those who want to compel what you think, may well start by compelling what you say. This, in a nutshell, is the problem with compelled speech. If we are all required to shout and proclaim "hashtag black lives matter" at all times, meaning that we are constantly focused on race as THE explanatory factor in society, and similarly if we are told constantly that all divergent outcomes between men and women, in which women come out behind is due to sexism, we have arrived at compelled thought. Humans, I believe, have inherently scientific minds. Which means that we can propose multiple explanations for an observed phenomenon and try to distinguish between those explanations. All children do this. Many children have this intuitive scientific tinkering drove out of them in school and by authority figures of all kinds. Looking for what is actually going on takes time, it's messy, and it will offend many of those who have arrived at the conclusion that they, themselves like. They will try to stop the investigation. They may even try to tell you that it is racist to investigate. Compelled speech restricts scientific tendencies and so leads to compelled thought. If The Overton Window has shrunk so far that an observation of a pattern has only one allowable explanation then we have neither freedom of speech nor thought and we have abandoned science... We also have little chance of actually fixing the problem, unless the one officially sanctioned explanation happens to be fully explanatory for all observed patterns, in all cases. I can guarantee that racism is not the only explanation for racial disparities and health outcomes. I can also guarantee that racism is insufficiently precise to be actionable, and this in part is the goal of the activists.

yeah