#ChrisRereads, Day Two: The Case for Cancel Culture

I was excited when I first heard of this book by Ernest Owens, an acclaimed Philly writer and leader in PABJ (the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists). The image above doesn’t show its subtitle: “How This Democratic Tool Works to Liberate Us All.” But even my initial first read told me this was the riposte we’ve all been waiting for to all that MAGA weaponization of an important concept.

Owens’ introduction starts with January 6, 2021, that “America is canceled” moment where we all watched literal efforts to block the results of the 2020 election and by extension the U.S.’ halting steps beyond the Trumpian nightmare. “They are really trying to take our country back,” a friend texted Owens on that day. The sicrght of terrorists wielding Confederate flags and zip ties warned of the dystopia they envisioned, one that cancels any whisper of democracy.

Owens proceeds to school us, or at least me, about how the current term “cancel” originated in Black Twitter, used in debates over celebrity misbehavior (e.g. #YourFaveIsProblematic) and broader injustice. He describes a signal moment when livetweeting the 2016 BET Awards: when a speech defending Black Lives Matter was overshadowed on Twitter by Justin Timberlake, Owens asked the latter to acknowledge his own musical debts to Black culture, “And apologize to Janet, too.” Thus did Owens help “cancel” one of the most powerful musicians of the 21st century — sparking a backlash that became the currently-accepted term “cancel culture.” Such tweets were labeled “bullying” and the “culture” bemoaned by former President Barack Obama as “not bringing about change…just casting stones.”

Owens felt that Obama statement like a backlash on his own body, a misunderstanding of the nuanced nature of cancellation, of the need to confront the powerful in public and not back down. He ends the chapter charting similar misunderstandings, from his the 2020 Harpers’ Magazine “Letter on Open Debate” to his own detention by Philadelphia police after he spoke out about the city’s historically racist Mummers Parade. He notes that hashtags have often been tolls both of cancel culture and of backlash, and declares that a nuanced understanding of the difference is essential.

Cannot wait for Chapter Two, a history lesson: “Cancel Culture Been Here.”