What Is Cancel Culture, and Is It a Good Thing?

The ongoing debate about “cancel culture” provides a glimpse into the scope of political polarization in the United States. Opposing sides can’t agree about what it is, who’s doing it to whom, or even whether it exists.

Let’s start with a simple summary: The right rejects any attempt to hold people accountable for ugly or hateful comments, decrying such efforts as cancel culture run amok, Meanwhile, the left argues that cancel culture is not real but merely a creation of right-wing fear-mongering, except when the right cancels liberals and leftists.

There are kernels of truth in those caricatures, but they obscure as much as they reveal. Such snark might be fun, but we need to have less fun in these debates. To make a productive conversation possible, we should start with definitions, which may be boring but increases our chances of understanding each other and minimizes the tendency toward self-righteousness.

There are a variety of terms for the process of disciplining someone for a perceived political or moral offense: shunning (refusing to associate with someone and encouraging others to do the same), canceling (removing someone from a position), or de-platforming (curtailing someone’s ability to speak in some public setting). Who gets canceled and how it plays out will depend on the public visibility of the person, the issue in question, and the power of the people doing the disciplining.

Context and details are crucial. Sometimes people who complain that they have been canceled have simply been critiqued in perfectly appropriate ways by people with whom they disagree. But sometimes people who say they have been canceled have been treated unfairly simply for holding a political position not favored in a group. Some definitional clarity is in order.

Within a political or social group with a mission and shared values, no one doubts that the group should enforce certain ideological baselines. Let’s start with a playful example. Several friends establish a chess club. A person who hates chess (perhaps a fanatical parent harangued this poor child to play constantly, resulting in a pathological anti-chess attitude) joins the club to disrupt others’ enjoyment of the game. No one would say that expelling the chess-hater from the club would be an inappropriate act of canceling, even if the person were an exceptional chess player. The group exists for a specific reason, which poses no threat to anyone outside the group, and disrupting the group serves no positive purpose.

Let’s move to a more realistic example. Imagine a community group is engaged in progressive political organizing on an issue such as militarism, economic justice, or environmental protection. If a member of the group consistently makes racist or sexist comments, should the group discipline or expel the offender? The first step might be to confront the person in a way that seeks resolution—“calling in” (reaching out to the person who has engaged in inappropriate behavior for dialogue) rather than “calling out” (publicly challenging or shaming them). But if the offender refuses to reconsider and argues that views on race and sex/gender are irrelevant to the group’s focus, must the group accept that individual?

It’s difficult to argue for inclusion, on at least two grounds. First, such comments can create a hostile environment that makes it difficult for others to participate. Second, even if the group includes only white men, a racist or sexist politics that accepts hierarchy on those fronts can’t be squared with a progressive challenge to hierarchy and abuse on other fronts. On the left side of the fence, no one tries to offer an intellectual defense of racism or sexism.

Things get trickier in more public realms, especially when the power of governments is in play. In U.S. law, the dominant interpretation of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and press provides wide latitude for citizens. But when an individual is acting on behalf of a public institution, where duties are as important as rights, things get murkier.

Should a professor at a public university be disciplined for making openly racist comments in class? Context is relevant, but such comments are likely to create a hostile environment that deprives some students of the education they are there for, and so discipline would be appropriate. If the professor’s comments were subtler, with disagreement over the racist character of the remarks, things get more difficult to resolve. What about a professor who pursues research on intelligence that some people believe to be either overtly racist or motivated by unconscious racism? Again, context matters, but that professor can claim academic freedom.

And then there are the cases from mass media and pop culture. What price should individuals in the public eye pay for actions that are deemed inappropriate in some way?

First, we have to distinguish between inappropriateness and illegal behavior. Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was not canceled for being inappropriate. He was a serial sexual predator who eventually was convicted of rape. Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly was dropped by the network after news leaked that he had settled five lawsuits filed by women accusing him of sexual harassment and misconduct. Prosecutors go after criminals. Corporations fire employees who violate work rules or expose the firm to damages for abusive behavior. Behavior that is illegal or creates serious legal liability is well outside discussions of cancel culture.

But other cases are more vexing, sometimes involving actions decades before, sometimes involving jokes that were acceptable in some segments of the dominant culture at the time, or actions that the perpetrator has admitted to and apologized for. Consider these cases: A white politician who appeared in blackface while in medical school, and a male politician accused of making sexist jokes and inappropriate touching while hugging supporters. Neither was accused of holding racist or sexist views in the present or pursuing racist or sexist political agendas. The former (Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia) stayed in office and served out his term without incident. The latter (Al Franken, the US senator from Minnesota) resigned under pressure, a decision that he, along with some who had demanded his resignation, later regretted. Like-minded people can disagree, and in these cases did.

To repeat, context is relevant. When an apology for racist or sexist comments seems sincere, should offenders be treated differently than those who won’t acknowledge wrongdoing? In cases where evidence is not conclusive, how do we balance a desire to protect people from the abusive behavior of others with the need for fairness in fact-finding and deliberation? Given how different people can perceive the same event in very different ways, how do we resolve such disagreements when there is no evidence beyond self-reports? Even when it is widely agreed that the alleged speech or actions are inappropriate, these factors complicate our decision-making processes.

Another set of challenges arise when people don’t agree on whether the statements and actions in question are inappropriate. Sometimes those debates take place in the culture at large, with people on opposite sides of the analysis. Sometimes such debates can also play out within an otherwise unified political group or movement. The question of Confederate symbols is an example of the former; some on the right defend them as “heritage not hate” while almost everyone on the left (myself included) denounce them as expressions of white supremacy. The debate over drag shows provides an opportunity to consider the latter; most on the left endorse drag except for radical feminists (myself included) who view it as a form of cultural appropriation.

This brief exploration isn’t meant to exhaust the topic but rather point out there are rarely simple answers about how social groups should enforce norms. But even if context and complexity mean there are no hard-and-fast rules, we can look for guidelines.

For me, a central question is whether a comment or action is merely offensive or truly oppressive. In a pluralistic society, I except to be offended on a regular basis because of conflicting values. But when people’s words and deeds help maintain or deepen systems of oppression, a collective response is justified.

That doesn’t tell us what responses are appropriate in any particular situation, but it can be the start of a conversation. These days, that’s a step forward.

This essay is adapted from It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics, published by Olive Branch Press.

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