Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Why we can’t stop fighting about cancel culture

"The Truth Behind Bari Weiss’s Resignation From the ‘NYT’
"WTF is "woke"? - The Strange Liberal Backlash to Woke Culture""

Ok, apparently i've missed it for five years, but am caught up good enuff on this stuff for now.

Is cancel culture a mob mentality, or a long overdue way of speaking truth to power?
By Aja Romano@ajaromano Dec 30, 2019, 12:40pm EST

One of the odder ideas to snowball its way into the zeitgeist during the decade’s turbulent second half is the idea that a person can be “canceled” — in other words, culturally blocked from having a prominent public platform or career.

Within the past five years, the rise of “cancel culture” and the idea of canceling someone have become polarizing topics of debate as a familiar pattern has emerged: A celebrity or other public figure does or says something offensive. A public backlash, often fueled by politically progressive social media, ensues. Then come the calls to cancel the person — that is, to effectively end their career or revoke their cultural cachet, whether through boycotts of their work or disciplinary action from an employer.

[...]

To Rose, and for many opponents of cancel culture, the bottom line in the debate is a need to believe that other people can change, and treat them with according optimism. The difference between cancel culture and a more reconciliatory, transformational approach to a disagreement is “the difference between expecting amends and never letting a wound close,” he said. “Between expressing your rage and identifying with it forever.”

“I get that, but that’s a really middle-class, white privilege way of coming at this,” Charity Hudley countered when I summarized Rose’s viewpoint for her. “From my point of view, for black culture and cultures of people who are lower income and disenfranchised, this is the first time you do have a voice in those types of conversations.”

Charity Hudley’s point highlights what seems to many to be the bottom line in the conversation around cancel culture: For those who are doing the calling out or the canceling, the odds are still stacked against them. They’re still the ones without the social, political, or professional power to compel someone into meaningful atonement, to do much more than organize a collective boycott.

“I think that’s why people see [cancel culture] as a threat, or furthering the divide,” she said. “The divide was already there.”

https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/30/20879720/what-is-cancel-culture-explained-history-debate