As U.S. citizens are inspired to dismantle and confront systemic racism in all forms, another hot-button topic has thrust itself into the spotlight: cancel culture. Given the moniker due to how masses of people quickly withdraw support for a public figure, effectively “canceling” them, cancel culture, made famous on twitter, has drawn the attention of countless celebrities, and even the nation’s president.
The internet is rife with debate over the value of digging through celebrities’ pasts and calling them out for questionable behavior, but it remains unclear what proponents of cancel culture seek to gain, or, hope that victims of cancel culture lose. In the wake of nationwide Black Lives Matter protests and immense social change when people are trying to learn how not to be implicitly racist, and instead become wholeheartedly antiracist, there absolutely should be a reckoning for racism that has gone unchecked. Unfortunately, “cancel culture” isn’t the reckoning that people who enact it think it is.
Consider those that may be branded “victims” of cancel culture. those poor, pitiful celebrities whose racists pasts and casual use of the N-word now threaten to uproot all of their present success lest they immediately contact their PR teams and formulate the best image-saving, notes app apology that explains, of course, they’ve changed. Oh, how unfair it is to hold past “mistakes” against these celebrities, to have the entire internet suddenly and aggressively turn against them en masse. They emptily gesture for positivity and no judgment, because humans make mistakes.
This is where cancel culture fails. Rather than eliciting genuine accountability, public figures are put on the defense, forced to either post a pressure-laden apology while the spotlight is on them, or to play the victim and decry cancel culture for invalidating any change or growth an individual makes, allowing the celebrity to virtue-signal their way back into public favor.
Makeup industry mogul Jeffree Star is no stranger to cancel culture, although he’s seemingly come out on the other side of his cancellations unscathed and career intact after three separate apology videos for his racist and manipulative behavior throughout his career. In his most recent non-apology entitled “Doing What’s Right,” the Youtube star prides himself on having an inclusive beauty line, name-drops Breonna Taylor and Elijah McClain to demand their justice before declaring “All Beauty Matters” and plugging his upcoming product release.
We need to do better.
Growth is a personal journey of awareness, education, and accountability, not a publicity stunt meant to change public opinion. More than anything, it’s important to listen to the voices of those who have been wronged by acts of racism and prioritize their feelings over the innate tendency toward defensiveness and image-saving.
There remains the argument that supporters of cancel culture simply enjoy watching public figures’ downfalls. Perhaps in some cases, that’s true. Consider it user error: rather than finding value in holding people with large influence accountable for their actions, maybe some people use cancel culture to add to their repertoire of internet wokeness, because logging onto Twitter and calling out a random celebrity is easier than personally confronting the uncle that has made a few too many racist jokes for there not to be a pattern. If cancel culture merely functions as another form of performative activism, to what extent can it enact actual change if people are unwilling to be just as confrontational to the racism they witness in their day-to-day lives?
It does not make you a bad fan to criticize a celebrity’s racist actions, nor does it make you a better fan for turning a blind eye to their racism, but keep that same energy when it comes to challenging racism encountered in our everyday experiences. Allowing anyone, regardless of social standing, to evade repercussions for instances of racism reinforces a system wherein White people don’t at all feel culpable for contributing to the systemic racism felt by BIPOC in their daily lives.
To be absolved of racist guilt is to deny social change.
So, no, cancel culture isn’t inherently an awful thing, but the removal of accountability is. The flaws of a movement comprised of a mass withdrawal of support due to problematic behavior without considering how to reconcile the harm done destabilize any of the good cancel culture tries to accomplish.
Accountability is not an act to save face, nor is it a trend. It is an ongoing process of admitting faults and taking active steps toward dismantling the systems that were previously upheld by racist behavior. Additionally, accountability does not and should not prevent consequences.
We don’t want a slew of celebrities becoming social pariahs because they used the N-word a decade ago. Instead, we want a culture that doesn’t allow racism to thrive unacknowledged. Don’t let people with platforms ignore the weight of their actions, and don’t believe your lack of a platform makes you powerless in disrupting systemic oppression.
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