Since I consume more news and opinion pieces (and fewer memes or cat videos) than the average resident of the internet, I keep encountering discussions about “cancel culture”. Has it gone to far? Not far enough? Who just got canceled? Should we cancel the culture of cancellation? (These are actual topics for think-pieces online.)

Define The Terms

Can we define our terms first? That makes the rest of this a lot easier. It also shows how conversations quickly become meaningless when different groups are using terms differently.

First, the right — positioning itself as defending free speech — uses the term “cancel culture” to mean “an attack on free speech”. Many use the word “censorship” and claim that the public sphere is increasingly intolerant of conservative ideas and positions. Multiple GOP politicians, as well as various celebrities, have complained that Twitter and Facebook, among others, are increasingly “silencing conservative voices” due to cancel culture.

But the term “canceled”, the new usage of which apparently arose within Black Twitter, was clearly never intended to mean silenced or censored, and certainly was never an attack on the First Amendment (which protects citizens from government control of their speech). All the initial uses of the phrase “he’s canceled” or “you’re canceled” that I can find refer simply to I’m unfollowing you or in the case of companies: I won’t shop there anymore, and others deserve to know why.

All it boils down to is a “calling-out”. A criticism.

The “culture” part got added later, as part of the deragatory backlash. Some began to worry we (as a society) were canceling too many people for infractions far too small. There arose a fundamental misunderstanding — the conflation of someone’s right to free speech with the privilege of being given a platform.

So, you see there are multiple things happening here and a lot of media commentary and online punditry tries to roll it all into one question: “Has Cancel Culture Gone Too Far?” Which is a dishonest question on its face, and implies that the people doing the “canceling” have some real power aside from informing their followers of some gaffe.

A Recent Example

One story that spurred me to write this entry was a weird intersection between Tom Brokaw and Duke University. Brokaw came under fire recently for his head-shakingly tone deaf suggestion that “Hispanics should work harder at assimilation” and “make sure that all their kids are learning to speak English”. (And, to be clear, by “came under fire”, I mean that people criticized him.) His commentary was just days after a Duke University official inexplicably demanded students in her program “commit to using English 100% of the time”.

(On the off-chance someone reads this who doesn’t understand why it’s problematic to go around telling people to “speekee the English”, it’s not complicated. [1] There’s no official language in the United States, [2] the country has always been multi-lingual, and [3] “English-only” movements in the U.S. have always been xenophobic. [4] Not to mention that, historically, children and grandchildren of immigrants do learn English, with the third generation typically entirely English-speaking. In Brokaw’s case, it’s arguable that his use of “Hispanics” is absurd, since the word means “people, nations, and cultures that have a historical link to the Spanish language or the country of Spain” — and you don’t have to think very hard to realize that the United States itself has a pretty strong “historical link” to both the language and country of Spain.)

The result was a slew of tweets asserting that “Brokaw is officially canceled”. The important thing to notice here is that none of the people who tweeted that actually have any power to end Brokaw’s career, affect his financial situation, or even remove him from the various platforms that still provide him a voice. It’s fairly easy to determine that what “canceled” means in this context is: “I lost respect for him” or “I’ve unfollowed him on this particular social media platform.” In other words, no harm to Brokaw at all. The only harm here, was Brokaw’s interjection of an ill-formed opinion (long debunked) into a social debate where his presence had never been requested.

The Duke University employee’s name has already been forgotten because you kind of have to be someone before you can get canceled. Tom Brokaw, on the other hand, is a longtime staple of the media landscape. He didn’t help matters with his non-apology, in which he said he felt bad that people were offended by his comments. Yet he still has over 300,000 followers on Twitter, and still gets paid by NBC News. He may never even know he’s been canceled — because out of touch seems to be his wheelhouse these days.

The Backlash

At some point in 2018, the whole canceling thing became so common and well-known that people attuned to these social forces began calling for the cancellation of “cancel culture”, as in this blog entry from June 2018 by Aisha Rimi (of the London School Of Economics).

“Many of us see times of ‘cancellation’ as an opportunity for black unity, both from the celebrity world and our peers, and seeing black celebrities speak out and show their allegiance to their community further fosters that united front amongst us.

“But it does make me wonder, does the whole cancel culture make people react too quickly before we are able to really decipher the situation? Are we all just a bit too quick to follow the crowd? ... Was all the furore worth it or productive?”

Rimi goes on to draw a disinction between two types of cancellations: (1) the ones that are truly important and effective, and (2) the ones that are fly-by-night and not that important to begin with. This approach contradicts her headline, but is probably a better sentiment. Some things, surely, need to be “canceled” (like a sports league that threatens fines for anyone who protests police brutality) while other things (an otherwise progressive celebrity who misspeaks on a particular issue) can either be ignored or treated as opportunities for education.

Still, despite that important distinction, Rimi seems to have forgotten that being “canceled” just means someone has criticized you. It’s not like when a TV show is canceled and hundreds of people have to scramble for new income. It has always been simply criticism.

The New York Times got in on the game (citing Rimi’s blog), but fortunately included the fact that “an act of cancellation is still mostly conceptual or socially performative”. The piece even subtly points out that the term has become so widespread that it’s often a spoof of itself. Whereas Black Twitter originally used the term to call out companies or celebrities who persisted in socially harmful behaviors, now the term is regularly used in decidedly silly contexts — any time any stimulus provokes a visceral reaction. One can imagine a gaggle of elementary school kids telling each other: “You’re canceled!” “No, you’re canceled!”

In My Own Head

Thinking of all of this gave rise to questions in my mind. Not about whether Black Twitter should quit canceling people, because that’s their business. Also not about whether the internet as a whole has gone overboard with canceling each other — because I really don’t think it makes any difference. The questions that came up for me were about my own behavior.

First, I had to catch myself. I realized I’d fallen under the spell of the right-wing narrative that these cancelations were magically stronger than simple criticism and calling-out. If Person A makes a overtly racist or sexist comment and Person B catches them in it publicly, the first person has only suffered the expected consequences of his speech; he hasn’t magically lost the right to that speech.

Second, I began looking at what some people were being “canceled” over, and wondered if I might be guilty too. I’m of the strong opinion that all my opinions should be revisited once in a while, to check their validity. This is what keeps me evolving and improving. While I certainly have views about other people’s ideas and behaviors, I eventually learned I can rarely affect what they believe and do. But certainly I can and should check myself occasionally.

Of course, the term cancel (in this context) doesn’t even apply to me, either as something that could happen to me or something that I could do to someone else. Since I am not a celebrity and don’t have many followers, no one could cancel me, no matter what I did. (What, am I going to slide sideways into continuing obscurity?) While I do sometimes call-out or criticize public figures, my relatively small circle of influence isn’t powerful enough to amount to a cancellation. I don’t even follow celebrities on social media, and therefore can’t unfollow them. When I decide to boycott a company I typically don’t announce it on social media — though I do sometimes mention it on this blog, and I do sometimes update a webpage that lists what I’m boycotting and why.

But the general idea, I’m on board with. I have intentionally cultivated a habit of not associating with people and/or corporations who actively work against basic human rights — even if those people were longtime friends or are family members and even if those companies are otherwise very convenient for me.

I’ve also questioned my own practice on a personal level. What did I hope to accomplish by unfriending a particular person? How permanent did I expect these personal-level cancelations to be? My social separations are, by intent, temporary, with the (perhaps vain) hope that a re-connection will someday occur. I do believe people can change (my evidence for this is that I have changed). I’ve doubted the effectiveness of this strategy, because: how will I know they’ve changed if I’ve cut off contact?

I had to remind myself that it was merely a hope that someone will change; that wasn’t the goal. The goal, when I sever a relationship, is to protect myself — or my immediate family. This is what I keep coming back to. And I question it too.

For concreteness, a few examples. (1) A family member posted his opinion that people of color were by nature less qualified for STEM programs; I replied to ask for clarification, but he didn’t respond. So I cut him off. I didn’t want to risk my children seeing a post like that, certainly not while they’re still so impressionable. (2) A cousin posted his opinion that women, especially black women, were mainly sex objects; I immediately unfriended him without comment. (3) Another relative said anyone who supported Colin Kaepernick’s protest against police brutality should be deported or otherwise leave the country, and then that same person suggested a good way to convert atheists to Christianity was to threaten them with death. Canceled. (4) Other family members posted their support of (seriously) the Confederate States Of America, and some insisted we should “at least hear what they have to say” in the context of Nazi demonstrations.

After thinking back over all this, I’ve decided to hold my ground. Nothing in me is able to get along with people who support the Confederacy or white supremacy in any other form. I’m not going to find a middle ground with people who think my gay friends should have fewer legal rights. I can’t see myself finding a compromise with theocrats (what would that even look like? “Okay, your religion can run the country part of the time”?) And so on.

And, just like the actual cancel culture, I haven’t infringed in any way upon any rights of any of these people. They just don’t get to have influence over me anymore. They can keep their right to free speech, but they never had a right to my time or attention. (And almost all of them would still have my friendship if they hadn’t suddenly become strangely vocal about their disdain for basic human rights.)

I might someday conclude I was wrong about all of this. I have read about the Muslim woman Deeyah Khan, who befriended the very people who hate her, and I have wondered what effect, if any, it would have if I re-connected with those I’ve unfriended. I know many people who manage to shrug off their differences with friends and acquaintances, to “live and let live”. I don’t think I could do either. “Yes, I know I unfriended you due to overt racism, but maybe we should still be friends.” Nope.

There’s no way to know what Future Me will do about any of this. The only thing I can predict with any degree of confidence is that Future Me will overthink it. He’ll keep coming back to this, never put it out of his mind. I do hope that Future Me is smarter than right-now me, and maybe he’ll figure something out.

Addendum:

One thing Future Me did was write another blog entry, clarifying some of my positions. Please see The Core Values I Require In Friends And Family, from November 2019.