This week's culture conversation: 'cancel culture'

Brandon: Have you heard about the Goya Foods controversy?

Leah: A bit. Fill me in.

B: After the company's CEO praised President Donald Trump, many Latinos -- the company focuses on the culinary tastes of Latino cultures -- said that they're going to boycott. Predictably, some people, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee, didn't like that, and framed the reaction as another instance of "cancel culture."

What comes to mind when you hear that term?

L: My mind goes to R. Kelly, whom many have tried to cancel for his sexual abuse charges. But his music still gets played, regardless of whether people choose to engage with it. So is it even possible to cancel someone? What does that term even mean?

B: I think of cancel culture as a sort of shell game: Its detractors say that they're about free speech, about protecting the First Amendment, but what they're really about, it appears, is freedom from criticism or accountability. To me, it's a term that's just so imprecise and incendiary that it's almost meaningless.

L: OK, that's true. I agree the term itself has basically lost all meaning. But it's an interesting concept, if only because it forces people to look at things as black or white: This person is bad, so we have to cancel them, and never again engage with them. Which isn't how life works. I mean, R. Kelly is referenced enough that he still has some cultural capital, you know?

B: That gets at another problem I have with the way cancel culture is tossed around. Most of the people who've been canceled haven't actually been canceled. I'm not saying that no one's ever been canceled. (Though I don't think that anyone's making that argument?) But true cancellation is the exception, not the rule. The supposedly canceled tend to remain influential. R. Kelly's music is still available on Spotify. Dave Chappelle is still releasing comedy specials. JK Rowling is still a global icon and multimillionaire.

Like "political correctness," cancel culture tries (often disingenuously, I'd argue) to be a container for social and political realities that can't be boiled down that easily. At their core, these are complicated conversations about power, about people -- including women and people of color -- making their voices heard in spaces where they've historically been ignored.

Think about it: Who are the people usually characterized as cancelers? If we go back to the Goya example, it's Latinos, who are pushing back against a CEO's flattery of a President who's spent his time in office disparaging Latino communities in a racist manner. With Rowling, it's transgender communities and their allies, who are rebuking someone who's trafficking in harmful, essentialist notions of gender.

L: Exactly! This idea of canceling someone is so vague. Like, remember when Shane Gillis, who was almost on "Saturday Night Live," was fired for his racist jokes? So many people were all "cancel culture

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