Cancel Culture

Real Coffee With Scott Adams (the cartoonist behind Dilbert) had hosted a public (Youtube) livestream for an hour or so every single morning @ 8:00 (local) as he interacted with an audience of two thousand or so via real-time posted comments.

His session a couple of weeks ago (having just stumbled upon it) included the subject of race and race relations. Among his general points: the power of individual initiative; the importance of role models; the critical part that education (in the broad sense) plays in overcoming most life disadvantages. On the one hand, there seemed little to take issue with. On the other hand, in the context of race relations, that hour felt somehow charged, as if one were watching a bomb-defusing scene -- one twitch and the whole damn thing would explode.

Detonate it did, just one week later. In a subsequent podcast of February 22, Adams – citing a (Rasmussen) poll that apparently found only a slim majority of Black Americans agreed with the statement that "It's okay to be White" – was quoted as saying this demonstrates that the black community is effectively a hate group, that this racial divide was never going to go away, and that Whites would do well by "getting the hell away."

Boom. The aftermath was immediate, widespread, and punitive i.e. among a number of other consequences, the entire Dilbert syndication of over thirty years was summarily canceled.

The threshold question for discussion is what does free expression in America now even look like within an evolving cancel culture. While the free-speech laws on the books may remain robust, surveys suggest increasing levels of self-censorship from the widespread use of private power against allegedly offensive speech, the subject of our focus article (NYT: Two Different Versions of Cancel Culture).

Where do you see the line drawn? The author would draw the line at a point where someone might be cast out of polite society for saying something that is conventional, normal, and in good faith. Says who? The author does acknowledge the window(s) for acceptable speech may be narrowing with the tightening of partisan tolerance and increasing assertions of bad faith.

Applied to the Adams case: while the author (now) sees, for example, the previous private suppression of the Covid-19 lab-leak theory to perhaps have been inappropriate, there can be no doubt, he says, the line must be drawn at this “gutter-level racism.” Maybe so, perhaps this private censorship is appropriate.

But, then again, perhaps this case illustrates what is lost with any denial of free speech, whether by rule of law or, in effect, by a cancel culture environment. Putting aside, for the moment, the immediate visceral reaction to the headline quotations, any chance for thoughtful engagement on the topic would be lost – like the topic of racism, where the failure to openly and honestly discuss it serves only to drive it further underground where it continues to metastasize (MM 4/22/19 Now Listen Whitey (Racism).

Context matters. We might discover, for example, the way to defang the very word “racist” is to understand its use may be more akin to tribalism, a phenomenon that’s applied to all groups throughout man's evolution (MM 9/23/19 Sapiens).

When Adams asserts that the racial divide can’t be fixed, maybe he means the underlying problem emanates from a certain failure of black imagination, and that change must come from within. Agree or not, it’s worth discussing given most efforts in the past having featured an imperiously white context of things.

The point is that denial of free speech, whether by law or by a cancel culture, is pernicious. If Member Monday stands for anything, the forum stands for unfettered discussion. Our very first session seven years ago addressed one of Howard Zinn’s central question about whether racism is the result of some natural antipathy on the part of whites towards blacks or rather is the residue of some long-ingrained social system (MM 7/5/16 A People's History Of The United States).

Securus locus as we pick our way through the residue of the Adams bomb crater.