Directed right, ‘cancel culture’ could help cancel injustice
I read social media sparingly, but even so, I see the outrage and indignation expressed when the public responds to actions dubbed racist.
Recently, I myself was engrossed in the story that resulted in Sharon Osbourne being unceremoniously “let go” from the television talk show “The Talk.”
Osbourne received backlash over her comments defending British TV personality Piers Morgan, who has been accused of being racist for his comments about Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex.
I became aware of the power of cancel culture, aka “call out” culture, as I read about Osbourne. I was acutely reminded that there is something satisfying about seeing someone called to account. But there also is something at risk — when the accused is “called out” with such emphasis that they are then seen as “the victim.” True enough that some
lose jobs, public esteem, opportunities, business for their companies and more.
It seems that cancel culture emerges to take down an otherwise law-abiding citizen who admittedly engaged in behaviors that represent implicit bias, but bias that research shows we all carry.
Efrén Pérez, associate professor of political science and sociology at Vanderbilt, calls implicit bias “an umbrella term for a variety of attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and stereotypes that we all carry to some degree. They tend to be automatically triggered, hard to control and can often influence what we say and do without our awareness.”
According to Perez, implicit bias infuses the very fabric of perceptions in the U.S. because of our racial hierarchy: “the idea that racial and ethnic groups are arrayed in descending order of social status and dominance, with whites atop and minorities to varying degrees below. Even if someone explicitly disavows this state of affairs,” Pérez explains, “a part of one’s mind recognizes that in the U.S., whites are more socially esteemed than non-whites.”
Overwhelming research evidence indicates that we all have perspectives, attitudes and beliefs about people based on this hierarchy, and that many of these beliefs influence our behavior.
But if we all carry implicit bias, aren’t we all guilty of inaccurate perceptions?
Admittedly, minorities don’t have the collective power to affect quality of life for whites at the same level and impede freedom, upward mobility, and even our lives. Yet, in today’s culture, when someone is publicly pegged as the culprit of a racial bias, is the outcry and negative attention harsher when the perpetrators are white?
Honestly, I can’t answer this question.
But I can share what I would like to see us do in a culture that reacts to racial issues with posts and tweets. I’d like to see us take a page from adrienne maree brown’s, work: “We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice.”
She encourages us to ask at least two questions before we post a “call out.”
Does the accused have significantly more power than the person or group harmed? Has the accused person or group acknowledged or begun to take responsibility for any harm caused?
To these questions, I would add my own: Does the “call out” help stop behaviors that have an adverse impact on Black and brown people?
And what should we all be doing in addition to the public outcry to prevent biases in the first place?
Maybe then cancel culture can help us cancel structural injustice. Instead of calling people out, how about calling people up to work on that.
Toni C. King is an associate professor of Black studies and women’s and gender studies at Denison University. She is director of the Center for Black Studies.