We Need To Abolish Cancel Culture

At this moment in time, we need to start shifting how we understand the function of cancel culture. I feel that cancel culture is an important part of keeping those who don’t technically owe us much working in the interest of the public. While that is important when it comes to talking about micro and macro aggressions we need to be more discerning about the difference between harmful and shameful. These two concepts have to be differentiated if we hope to continue cancel culture. 

What is Cancel Culture?

Getting canceled is a vibe check for celebrities. Cancel culture was birthed at a time where people realized that they both wanted their ‘influencers’ and celebrities to represent their political beliefs and understood that silence is complicity. It first hit the mainstream when people started trending hashtags to call out and shine a light on the racist, homophobic, and sexist comments and actions of huge Youtube influencers. “#______isOverParty”, went from being this new fangled uncertain fad to being a huge movement that aimed to stop or at least reprimand these pseudo-celebrities.  

Many hoped that these twitter sessions where everyone entered into a frenzy posting and reposting videos and screenshots would ‘end’ their targets’ careers but it has yet to be widely successful. Some influencers like James Charles seem almost impervious to cancellation but others have had severely quieter careers post-scandal. 

James Charles is the poster boy for the post-scandal comeback. He has been through multiple racism scandals, public feuds with celebrities, botched eyeshadow palettes and transphobic comments. Most infamously after leaching millions of subscribers in what most Youtube drama channels call “Dramagedon”, he came back with a better reputation than ever. The young star has been canceled time and time again and yet, he comes back to the same subscriber base as before.

While cancel culture came for beauty influencers at first, it expanded to other influencer communities and then into celebrity stan culture. Now it has set for itself not only loftier goals like tackling the global capitalist framework as a whole, but also smaller ones like ending the casual racism we see amongst our friends and family members.

One major debate in these kinds of activist subcultures that actively call for the cancelation of these pop culture figures is where does the line fall between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation?

What is cultural appropriation?

Appropriation is what the Kardashians do every other week. It is all about taking aspects of someone else’s culture, especially an aspect which they themselves are shunned for, claiming it as your own (often profiting from it), and being praised for it.  

It can also be a different combination of these things, maybe we don’t claim it as our own but we fail to give credit to its creators. Or, more commonly, we take something that is general like a hairstyle with deep cultural significance, and wear it as our own. 

Celebrities are constantly being canceled for appropriating culture. Most of the time we think of the appropriation of Black culture but as Asian and Latinx activism grows we are becoming increasingly aware of how many companies and people continue to profit off of their cultures as well. But our friends and family don’t have the clout required to shift huge cultural narratives, their Instagram posts aren’t breaking the internet, and no one is going to call out cornrows (insert your aunt’s name here) braids.

So, if your friends and family who stumble on to other cultures aren’t appropriating them, what are they doing? 

What is cultural appreciation?

Some might conflate this lack of ability to shift sociocultural narratives with appreciating a culture, but just because your friend only has 100 followers on Instagram doesn’t mean that her appropriation of box braids isn’t wrong or harmful. So then, what is cultural appreciation?

Appreciation is about respect, honoring tradition, and sharing in a cultural experience. The most classical example of this debate about appreciation and appropriation is the difference between Angelina Jole wearing a hijab and Kim Kardashian wearing braids. But this comparison isn’t perfect, because there is no way to wear box braids to show reverence or honor a tradition. Black hair is culturally significant but you don’t need to wear our hairstyles to access our culture. 

When non-muslim women wear hijabs (in a respectful manner) it is to access that culture. In countries and contexts in which you have to wear a hijab, wearing one is not about disrespecting them. But that doesn’t say you cannot appropriate the hijab, it just means that we need to be more discerning of non-hijabi non-muslim women who don one. 

This still doesn’t answer the question of your friend or auntie who is wearing another culture for style. 

Where is the middle ground?

I like to call this a cultural disappointment. 

Why is the cultural disappointment important?

Cultural disappointments are the small acts that are harmful and hurtful that the people we know partake in. It’s that white friend who went to the Caribbean and came back with cornrows or your black friend who bought those handbags shaped like stereotypical Chinese take out boxes and the chopstick hairpins. It the little things, that take us back because they make us feel betrayed and unloved. It is so hard to watch people you love so openly disrespect you and your race, but we also have to understand that that doesn’t always warrant being canceled. 

Something a lot of people have been calling for in the midst of the protests and massive calls for social justice is for more and more people to call out their friends and family. And while that is undoubtedly an important part of the fight for social justice, we can’t simply go around canceling everyone we know for their mistakes. 

The reason we need to hold celebrities accountable through tweetstorms is that they have the ability to sway the narrative. Moreover, they don’t have any real incentive to do better unless they see that their fanbase (read as income) are ready to desert them. But our friends and family do owe us something, and when they are willing to listen to their POC friends and hear their stories, then there is no need to cancel. 

When they post and do things that contribute to appropriation, we have to be considerate. To do better, we need to reform and maybe even abolish cancel culture. 

We need to reconstruct it because there is a gap between being malicious and willful in the way one steals from other cultures and being unwitting and ignorant. We can’t possibly all be so willfully racist and conniving and I am willing to be that the majority of the people you regularly hang out with aren’t being malicious, they just don’t know any better. 

Understand that there are more options than cancellation and that you would do more for the fight if you chose to educate your friends and family rather than alienate them.

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Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley