What does it mean to be offended? What is offense? The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that Offense is: "4 a : the act of displeasing or affronting b : the state of being insulted or morally outraged
Offense is kind of a tricky thing, because it's been so long since I was ever personally offended by anything. Being offended shows, I would surmise, a defect of character, either as someone who has a deep-seated desire to get angry over something, or who holds his or her own views paramount to anyone else's. For if it were not those two things, why would there be any stink over books in the library ("Heather Has Two Mommies is bad because it's an affront to common decency! The Handmaid's Tale is anti-Christian! Fahrenheit 451 says 'damn' too many times! Harry Potter encourages witchcraft!" [Note: These are all true examples]). The funny thing about offense, too, especially in cases dealing with media, is that all too often the offended party has no idea what the defending party is actually about (notice Fahrenheit 451 in the examples). Also note that even To Kill A Mockingbird was once declared racist simply because Harper Lee had characters in the 1930s say "nigger." I'll give you a minute to digest that.
But then, there's another kind of offense, and that is the result of any kind of attack on an ethnicity or race. But I would propose that we aren't offended by the attack in itself, but because of the ignorance behind it. If someone tells a racist joke, for example, it isn't that he should be written off as a racist simply for that joke, but if he is a member of the KKK, has a Confederate flag on his pickup-truck, and is virulently nativist, then yes, we would have license to write him off as a racist and be offended not because of the attack, but because *he genuinely believes in it*; we find the person--not his attack--offensive.
The 'right' to offense is much like the 'right' to discriminate: There is none, because to act on one's views in this way would curtail another's right to express him- or herself. There are people, for example, who would want to prevent homosexuals (I enjoy using this example because it is the most pervasive and obvious one) from joining their organizations, such as the Christian Legal Society of Hastings College1, and they say that their right to prevent gays from joining their group trumps gays' right to join if they choose (because I can't see them wanting to join anyway, though that is entirely irrelevant). The case actually went up to the Supreme Court, and they struck down the idea.
In my case, any kind of "offense" at what I've written here would infringe upon my exercise of freedom of speech, which for me covers everything except one key provision: Death threats and calls to violence against others (political leaders especially) is *NOT* covered. Barring that, anything goes legally, though I impose two other regulations upon myself: 1) Don't swear (often, or unless in quotes), and 2) Back up what I say.
What about my own reactions? Do I find anything offensive? I'm hard to offend. I can get to the bottom of the encyclopediadramatica.com/offended************* page unfazed (you could either attribute that to a strong will or a heart with the composition of a comet flying through deep space, it's your choice), and my reaction to prejudice is often just to laugh, and then type angrily. On the off chance I am offended by something, it's usually by the profound ignorance exuded by the offending party. And even if I am offended, it is never to the point where I would want to remove that person's freedom of speech, for what then would I be but a hypocrite? When I turn on Fox News, I'm more concerned with people believing Glenn Beck than Glenn Beck himself. And we don't fight his followers by telling them that they can't listen to him. In fact, it is more helpful to me if I know who they are so that I can avoid talking to them and boarding a train to Crazyland.
If we didn't let people be racist or otherwise socially impaired, it isn't as though they wouldn't still hold those views, they would still cause problems in other ways. The best way to heal these people is through education and exposure to the cultures which they hate, though this would undoubtedly be a very long process. Really, it's nothing we as a society can accomplish; rather, they must somehow discover it on their own, much like I discovered that religious people aren't all bigots and xenophobes. The irony is that I was being one, too.
1) http://www.aclu.org/blog/lgbt-rights/supreme-court-strikes-blow-against-lgbt-discrimination
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