There's no such thing as cancel culture

Great Debates
21

Fair enough. In general, the world is arguably too full of people randomly expressing their pointless opinions to others who have no interest in hearing them. They should come to the Straight Dope, where we have all voluntarily agreed to hear and discuss one another’s pointless opinions to the extent of our inclination and ability. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

But the general principle of people having the right to criticize what they want is IMO more important than the general principle that the world would probably be a better place if more people across the board spent more time shutting up.

22

This is what I was going to try point out next, albeit much clumsilier:

“In truth, Black, brown, and LGBTQ+ people — particularly Black and trans people — can now critique elites publicly and hold them accountable socially; this seems to be the letter’s greatest concern.”

What is perceived as cancel culture is the inevitable and necessary erosion of the traditional politesse which balked at forthrightly addressing social ills the maintenance of which upheld the status quo of the presumed supremacy of the Straight White Christian Male. Cries of “cancel culture” are absolutely analogous to demands that we must make America great again: it’s a lament for the good ole days when you could be explicitly bigoted without consequence. Its just another death rattle of SWCM supremacy

23

Then what would you refer to the behavior described in Post #2 as?

When conservatives boycott or otherwise punish people for supporting LGBT or not toeing the religious line, what would you call that other than cancel culture?

24

I’d call that homophobia.

25

It depends on the scale. If they’re complaining about gay people the same way POC complain about white people, I don’t think that falls under “cancel culture.” No one/nothing is actually being “disappeared.”

If they’re advocating for some kind of policy change based on their shitty opinions, that is a greater threat. I wouldn’t call it “cancel culture,” which would seem to trivialize it. In general I think the term “cancel culture” is meant to trivialize the anger or actions of someone you disagree with.

26

Boycotting =/= cancel culture

27

Advocacy is a threat?

28

Of course.

The right-wing response (in a funhouse mirror reflection of certain Dope attitudes) would probably be that “gee, the left wing does it a lot more, so don’t look at us” - which is a form of denialism, or at least being too lazy to call out bad behavior even if it involves your side.

I see examples where the needle has swung too far in the direction of stifling/punishing speech with which one disagrees. On the other hand, discouraging incredibly moronic behavior on social media or in journalism by creating consequences, is not something to blithely dismiss as “cancel culture”.

29

Absolutely. What’s funny is, you could probably binge watch hours of Tucker and hannity talking about Dr Seuss and not know it was the publisher that voluntarily dropped the books, and the nature of the content that caused them to do that.

30

Slightly off-topic.

Hannity had a message board at the time of the Charlie Hebdo murders.
The official position of the board itself was ‘We Are Charlie’ ('course in American not that ‘surrender monkey’ ‘Je Suis Charlie’) in the loudest, ‘let’s go kill us some ragheads’, way.
Posting the Charlie Hebdo cartoons was a . . . bannable offense because the cartoons were such an affront to common decency.

Apparently, if you don’t call it ‘cancel culture’ … it isn’t.

31

Which is why the best antidote to it is unions. Let a cancel culture brigade run headlong into a union and figure out that, when you have to have reasons and due process to fire someone, the whole thing takes so long the Twitter people move on, taking the impetus for firing with them.

Maybe they can cancel a union. Maybe they can see what happens to people who try.

32

If we define “cancel culture” as “a mob is trying to get me fired for saying or doing offensive things”, then yes, it exists, and has existed forever.

There are exactly 3 reasons we’re talking about it now:

  1. For the first time, it’s mainly the majority (white and/or male) that’s getting skewered. These folks are notoriously fragile because they’ve never faced any sort of consequence for egregiously bad behavior.
  2. One good consequence of white people getting a taste of cancellation is that the usual consequence is job loss, as opposed to physically tying a noose around their neck and hanging them from a tree, or dragging them behind a car, as has traditionally been routine for black men (not that it keeps anyone from squalling about it)
  3. The internet is now old enough to have documented decades of activity, which occasionally captures people at a much more immature phase in life, or when prevailing social attitudes were less evolved than today.

The first two factors are proper and salubrious influences in society. The white patriarchy has victimized people for too long with no accountability whatsoever. The last one gives me some pause… how hard should consequences be for something said when the person (or society) was much dumber than it is now?

Sincere apologies ought to be accepted, such as: “it was absolutely wrong, and I’ll never do it again, I denounce others doing it and I wish to make amends.” Those people should all get a fresh start.

Unfortunately that sort of apology is extremely rare. More common is the non-apology: “I’m sorry you took it the wrong way, it was a long time ago, let’s just forget about it.” I have absolutely no problem with that person losing job after job until they learn to be accountable.

33

A point I’ve raised before, and that I (humbly) think bears repeating:

To the Confederacy, the Civil War really was just Northern “wokeness” run amok. Maybe it’s the sort of nightmare scenario at the end of the slippery slope that people like Asahi are trying to warn us about.

[I know there are far more deleterious outcomes that are theoretically possible, but the last election reminded us that – tenuous though it is – we’re really not a nation of horrible people (if not by much)]

Pretty indefensible, but that is what they believed then, and it is what many from those states still believe to this day.

Wrong side of history. Mostly the same demographic as always. And, as Irruncible so eloquently stated, for pretty much the same reasons as always.

34

This is absolutely it.

Over a century and a half later, the names have changed, the terminology has changed, the political parties have rebranded. But the one enduring constant is the idea that the natural order is for white people to take affront, demand apologies, and mete out consequences against the marginalized. They assume the rectification of the situation will result in others abusing them in the same way, a situation that’s such an unthinkable and grave affront to nature that literally any defense of it is excusable.

I’m always amused when white men talk about their fear of becoming a minority in the US. Why is that, does America treat minorities badly, or is the thought of not being dominant just too horrifying to contemplate?

35

I’m worried about civil war but that isn’t related to my concerns about being overly woke.

To be clear, I think our collective reckoning with race is long overdue. There are times when interventions and sanctions are required in dealing with people who are bigoted and who use their stature, influence, and power to inflict harm on others.

I just don’t believe that the answer for every slight should be so extreme as to threaten their reputation or their ability to earn an income. In some cases, people ask for a public humiliation and takedown, and they get exactly that, deservedly. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes people misspeak. Sometimes they reveal unintentional bias and ignorance, which does need to be confronted but doesn’t always deserve punishment and retribution. We should know the difference between the two types of people.

That being said, I also understand - maybe not to the extent that I should - that there is also the question of representation in a pluralistic society. When unintentional ignorance or outright bias is exposed, even if bias was not intended to be malicious, there are legitimate questions about whether institutions are doing enough to diversify and be inclusive enough so that they aren’t top-heavy with whites only.

36

Usually they don’t speak that fear aloud, but I, white guy, can’t wait for it to happen. When this country is more of a melting pot, with more equal opportunity it will be more better by far.

37

We’re back to where the line gets drawn for ‘the offense’ and for ‘the consequence.’

Do you believe that a White House staffer who Tweets that they “can’t STAND Chinese food” would/should lose their job for nothing but that Tweet ?

I don’t.

Do you believe that nobody would say this was a bridge too far – that the line for ‘crime’ and the line for ‘punishment’ should be re-evaluated, or that – at the very least – the extant case didn’t meet either criterion – not by a country mile ?

How does a society find its way in issues like this without testing its boundaries ? By Caucus ?

And which lessons are more likely to have lasting impacts: an "inpatient, $80k/month Malibu ‘rehab’ center (a/k/a opulent re-education camp)’ or the cold sting of losing something (not everything – just one thing) that was precious to you and having to introspect and craft a new plan ?

Remember: Justine Sacco pretty much got her job back, and she is probably a great example of the masses getting it wrong (though she was far from blameless):

And Brett Kavanaugh would still have been a Judge if he hadn’t been confirmed to the SCOTUS. Not exactly drawing and quartering, huh ?

I think the Right went way too far vis-a-vis the Dixie Chicks.

Or Monica Lewinsky (though it surely wasn’t only the right that lit the torches and gathered up the pitchforks for her).

To cite just two. And they both had pretty significant and tangible losses as a result of their scarlet letters.

But the important thing is to have some individual and collective sense of where on those lines the pins are put, and try to make your voice heard when we go too far.

Which is maybe exactly what you’re doing, though I think your positions are more conservative than the majority round here, at least :wink:

38

I feel the same way. White privilege is a negative privilege. It doesn’t really help me, it just protects me from harm. But it’s powered by a cruelty that seeps through the cracks in ways that poison everything. I don’t need a society where I’m on top, just one where it’s safe and dignified to be on the bottom (a place where everyone spends some time, even if it’s only in the moments around birth, death, poverty, illness, or incapacity). Cruelty and dominance shouldn’t be aspirational traits and shouldn’t be praised or rewarded.

39

My cousin used to train Navy SEALs. I remember having a discussion with him once about ‘the soldier mindset.’

He said that ‘guys like him [my cousin] protect guys like me.’

I responded with, “Yeah. Guys like you do protect guys like me – from other guys like you !”

He laughed.

The ‘harm’ to which you refer is often far too baked into the system that we describe. The protections are what it means to institutionalize discrimination.

And the misery that befalls others, by design to a far too great extent, is definitely a negative sum game.

When we abandon(ed) any reasonable notion of The Common Good, we choose a path that requires that we, as individuals, secure safe drinking water, safe food, gated communities (to protect us from crime), behemoth SUVs (because the roads are so bad), backup generators (because the grid is dilapidated), private schools, better doctors, etc., etc., etc.

(Trying desperately to bring this back OT) The things that “cancel culture” shouts down are things that inure to our collective detriment in myriad and insidious ways. We’ve just been conditioned not to think of it in those terms.

“Rugged individualism”
“Social Darwinism”
“Anybody can get ahead in this country”

They’re jingoistic, but there are no end of things they ignore and miseries that they perpetuate and secure.

And – as I’ve mentioned before – how much simpler does it get than this (now a few years old, but who thinks it’s changed much since 2003 ?):

That isn’t a lynching, but ignoring it may – in aggregate – do as much harm as a lynching (I’m being dramatic for effect).

If you’re a minority in the United States, the next rung on that ‘ladder ?’ It’s coated in grease.

40

I also want to quickly note (because it’s only tangentially on-topic):

If anybody is unfamiliar with the details of the history of institutionalized housing discrimination in this country, it’s worth your time to look into it.

Where do most families in the US get their positive net worth ? Equity in the home they own. There’s a compounding effect in families where that money passes down to subsequent generations.

Take a look at how minorities were blackballed from that little club, too, and just how recently.

Sometimes you have to get at the rotten leaves before you can deal with the diseased trunk.

But any path to remediating the disease is worth talking about, IMHO.