Not canceled

The article by Sarah Hagi from Time magazine below is very well written.  The author also tells us she is a black, Muslim woman.  That conjures up to my mind a picture of a person who could not have written the article. To me the article sounds like something written by a highly literate white person and must therefore have been very extensively "polished up' by such a white person -- perhaps an editor at Time magazine.

My thinking in the matter is probably the very thing that enrages Ms Hagi.  She hates people making derogatory asssumptions about her. And she would call those assumptions "stereotypes".  But what are stereotypes?  It is a term with origins in the printing industry but as applied to people it is generally taken to mean inflexible and false generalizations about some group or other.

But stereotypes are in fact not like that.  As far back as the 1930s psychologist Gordon Allport pointed out that stereotypes usually have a "kernel of truth".  And my surveys of the psychological research literature (here and here) revealed that stereotypical beliefs are highly responsive to reality and to changes in reality.  So when somebody expects a black to be inarticulate, it follows that low levels of articulateness among blacks are common.

What the stereotype research also finds, however, is that stereotypes are only a useful first approximation.  I might have a stereotype of black as inarticulate that will in general guide me well but if I encounter a black who is very articulate I will no longer think of him as inarticulate but will think of him according to how he personally is.  My stereotype was not in any way imprisoning and I will go on to anticipate more articulate writing from him.

So that should be encouraging to all of us, but particularly to members of minority groups.  It tells us that minority group members might have to wait a little longer to have their good qualities recognized but that people who really come to know you will fairly quickly come to a recognition of your good qualities.

It's not as good as being a member of a prestigious group such as white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (a group to which I belong) but life will always be unfair in handing out its rewards.  So rather than grieve about belonging to a low prestige group it should be fairly comforting to know that in personal encounters you will be judged by how you personally really are rather than by some group to which you may belong. 

If a critic persists in using negative expectations of a person after he should have seen clearly that such expectations are wrong, the fault lies with the inadequate personality of the critic.  Normal people will not be like that.  In popular parlance, the critic will be an "ignoramus" -- who will get his just deserts in due course.

Ms Hagi is clearly not as patient as that and sees the criticism and attacks on people who speak incautiously as justified and useful.  Stereotypes are to her anathema.  When people say "racist" things they are most usually expressing a stereotype and Ms Hagi enjoys seeing them punished for that.  That there will still be general agreement with the stereotype she does not address.  Critics may have succeeded in hurting an individual but the population as a whole will be unmoved. They may be more inclined to keep their mouths shut but their beliefs will not change. 

If anything their beliefs may be strengthened.  The recent revolt of the masses against Leftist hectoring seen in the electoral successes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson may well be evidence of that -- and harbingers of many more such revolts to come.

So unlike Ms Hagi, I deplore attacks on speech.  For the most part the speakers will not actually be ill-intentioned and if they are it is surely best to know in advance who the "enemy" is rather than have him creep up on you unawares.

Ms Hagi seems to see the current "cancel" culture as a good way for disadvantaged people and their advocates to hit back at those who devalue them -- but the prospects of that doing any good are remote. Christian forgiveness would be a much better option -- but is obviously more difficult.

If forgiveness is not an option, letting insults slide off you like water off a duck's back would be very calming.  I have been called many things in my time and will probably get more of that in response to this essay but I have yet to be bothered by any of it. Resilience to verbal attacks and slights is the healthy way forward.  The fact that Ms Hagi lives in politically correct Canada yet still finds much to upset her suggests that her resilience is minimal.

Her article is however helpful in setting out how harmful cancel culture has been to many individuals -- though she tries to downplay the harm.  A major gap is that she does not address the way many people not ordinarily much in the public eye have been grievously hounded by the cancel culture warriors

So, in sum, continuing the attacks on ordinary people that cancel culture consists of will most likely just give you more Donald Trumps and Boris Johnsons.  Is that what Ms Hagi wants?


“Has cancel culture gone too far?” The question felt impossible to ignore this year. Google it and you’ll see pages of op-eds, often concluding, yes, it has gone too far, and the Internet mob is out of control.

Cancel culture became so central to the discourse in 2019 that even President Obama weighed in. The idea is that if you do something that others deem problematic, you automatically lose all your currency. Your voice is silenced. You’re done. Those who condemn cancel culture usually imply that it’s unfair and indiscriminate.

The problem with this perspective is cancel culture isn’t real, at least not in the way people believe it is. Instead, it’s turned into a catch-all for when people in power face consequences for their actions or receive any type of criticism, something that they’re not used to.

I’m a black, Muslim woman, and because of social media, marginalized people like myself can express ourselves in a way that was not possible before. That means racist, sexist, and bigoted behavior or remarks don’t fly like they used to. This applies to not only wealthy people or industry leaders but anyone whose privilege has historically shielded them from public scrutiny. Because they can’t handle this cultural shift, they rely on phrases like “cancel culture” to delegitimize the criticism.

Since the #Metoo hashtag went viral in 2017, more women have spoken out about their experiences with sexual harassment and assault.

While many people have applauded this movement, some men now say they fear even casual interactions with women will get them canceled.

Only that’s not what’s happening. While some powerful men may not have the status they once did, they have hardly been canceled. Louis CK admitted to masturbating in front of female comedians. He was dropped by his agency, and HBO and Netflix cut ties with him, but he recently sold out five shows in my home city of Toronto. Harvey Weinstein—who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 80 women (he has denied the allegations) and charged with predatory sexual assault, a criminal sexual act and rape (he has pleaded not guilty)—lost his job, but when he showed up at a young artists’ event in October, a comedian who called him out in her set was booed and two women who confronted him were asked to leave. When political journalist Mark Halperin, who denied allegations of unwanted sexual contact but acknowledged that his “behavior was inappropriate and caused others pain,” faced pushback over a new book, his publisher spoke to the New York Post decrying “this guilty-until-proven-innocent cancel culture where everyone is condemned to death or to a lifetime of unemployment based on an accusation that’s 12 years old.” That criticism is being compared to death tells you a lot about some of the people arguing that cancel culture has run amok.

In September, comedian Shane Gillis was fired from Saturday Night Live after videos of him making racist jokes surfaced. Comedian Bill Burr condemned the firing saying, “You f-cking millennials, you’re a bunch of rats, all of you,” and “None of them care, all they want to do is get people in trouble.” But having a job at SNL isn’t a human right. And although Gillis’ defenders have fretted about the sanctity of free speech in comedy, the audience of a comedic TV show should get to speak out about whether they want to watch someone who has espoused this type of humor. That’s actually the marketplace at work. Why should Gillis be able to utter racist things but those affected by hate speech shut their mouths? Gillis is still a touring comedian. He will be fine.

Although use of the term spiked this year, the idea of cancel culture has been bubbling for a while. In 2016, Kim Kardashian shared clips revealing that despite Taylor Swift’s claim that Kanye West didn’t warn her about a provocative lyric, he actually did give her a heads-up and she thanked him. Swift said she was “falsely painted as a liar.”

But soon #Taylorswiftiscanceled was trending.

“When you say someone is canceled, it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being,” Swift told Vogue this summer. “You’re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could also be perceived as, kill yourself.” There aren’t many people who can understand what Swift went through. To have so many people turn on you is surely upsetting. But how exactly was she canceled? Though many people believed that this white woman had disingenuously portrayed herself as a victim of a black bully and made clear that they didn’t find that acceptable, Swift has remained one of the highest-paid celebrities in the world.

The conversation reached a new level in October when Obama expressed concern about the way people are called out on social media. “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly,” he said at a summit. He didn’t use the term, but the assumption was he was condemning cancel culture.

Now I am certain Obama wasn’t talking about Louis CK in his call for us to be less judgmental. He was pointing out that people are complicated and make mistakes, though I’m not convinced they are being written offin the way he thinks. It should also go without saying that Swift’s perceived offense should not be lumped in with Weinstein’s alleged crimes. But that’s another problem with the conversation about cancel culture. It oversimplifies. The term is used in so many contexts that it’s rendered meaningless and precludes a nuanced discussion of the specific harm done and how those who did it should be held accountable.

Rather than panicking that someone might be asked to take a seat, we would all do well to consider the people who are actually sidelined: those who lose professional opportunities because of toxic workplaces, who spend years dealing with trauma caused by others’ actions, who are made to feel unsafe.

I write frequently about racism and Islamophobia and have received more death threats, calls for my firing and racist insults than I can keep track of. But when people who believe cancel culture is a problem speak out about its supposed silencing effect, I know they’re not talking about those attacks. When they throw around terms like “cancel culture” to silence me instead of reckoning with the reasons I might find certain actions or jokes dehumanizing, I’m led to one conclusion: they’d prefer I was powerless against my own oppression.

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