So-Called “Cancel Culture” Doesn’t Exist, But As White Women We Really Want it To (Let’s Move Away From the False Binary of Call-Ins and Call-Outs Too)
By: Erin Monahan
Tags: Cancel Culture, BlackLivesMatter, Feminism, Anti Racism, White Supremacy

I’ve noticed we are confusing cancel culture with accountability. I’m speaking particularly to fellow white women…

Read, respect, and pay educators like Ericka Hart and Wagatwe Wanjuki who are leading conversations and actively writing about this. I’m grateful to them and credit them for my understanding about this topic.

I’ve noticed that we are confusing our own capacity, our specifically white people capacity, to jump down each other’s throats for making mistakes or missteps with the real legitimacy of holding people accountable in public for abusing their power.

For example, when I was beginning my journey of waking up to my attachment to whiteness, when I first realized I was white, when I first read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, I was enraged and furious. I called my parents crying and screaming and was like, “What are we doing??!! What are we going to do?!!”

But this is the most dangerous place a white person can be in their unlearning process. I was a danger and threat to social justice arguably more than when I was “asleep” because I wanted to find someone to blame, someone to point the finger at.

In hindsight, after some painful lessons with deep gratitude to anti-racist educators and organizations like Kenya Budd and AORTA, I’ve learned that a very quintessential, conditioned response of white supremacy culture is to do just that:

Shirk accountability, seek desperately for an external cause, not look in the mirror, not take any personal responsibility, point the finger, blame, project, deflect, and definitely not pause or self-reflect.

White supremacy wants us to react, be impulsive, act from a sense of urgency. It’s a complex systems that needs to be thought about in all of its complexity and the nuanced ways it shows up in our psyches, behaviors, language, etc.

But this is a function of the system: lack of nuance and a lack of capacity for holding nuance.

But we need to distinguish:

⁣The phenomenon of us white people dog-piling on top of each other (for harm we’ve all been guilty of causing at some point, or are at least prone to committing at any point in the future) as a way to project a moral superiority over each other

VS.

⁣The very legitimate act of calling out harm/abuse/violence

Because when we conflate the two we wade into the murky waters of gaslighting BIPOC.

For us white people, yes, we’re all responsible for each other’s unlearning and learning, AND we need to prioritize accountability over white comfort.

So, for those of us who keep saying “I don’t like cancel culture,” — take a step back and think about what you’re really talking about.

There are no real consequences for anyone who seemingly gets “cancelled.” Are you just afraid of being “next”? Those who worry about cancel culture are typically in positions of power and privilege.

Lana Del Rey is still making lots of money. Taylor Swift has still won lots of awards. People being addressed for harm doesn’t leave them houseless, powerless, or depleted of resources.

The only cancel culture if there was one would be the prison industrial complex. Why aren’t we talking about that? If cancel culture existed Jeff Bezos, Trump, and killer cops would be in jail.

Having compassion for fellow white people who are working to unlearn is our job, yes, *and* calling out/addressing/holding people accountable is also our responsibility (and this is not cancel culture).

Let’s make sure that we’re not conflating compassion with bypassing the difficulty and discomfort that is inherent in anti-racist work.

Let’s make sure we’re actually addressing, explicitly and precisely, the harm of white supremacy and how it manifests.

Let’s make sure to internalize that holding someone accountable for harm and centering the victim is truly compassionate, and truly rooted in “love and light.”

Let’s make sure we’re prioritizing accountability.

We also need to address the false binary of “call in” vs “call out” because this is also a product of white supremacy. Framing things within the context of call in/call out, either/or mentality can actually work to harm BIPOC further too because then this can slide into tone-policing where white folks can move away from taking accountability by arguing, “Well, if you just called me in instead of out maybe I’d be more willing to listen to you/respect you/hear you.”

So, instead of labeling it a “call in” we just need to understand that we are simply being held accountable, which is probably not going to feel good, but it doesn’t mean this is a “bad” thing. As white adults we are responsible for our actions and emotions despite being conditioned within a culture that doesn’t hold us responsible for these things. Those we harm aren’t responsible for our feelings. If we feel shame or guilt it’s not the responsibility of the harmed to be our caretakers.

Being addressed for harm doesn’t have to be labeled as “called in” or “out” — we can just call it being held accountable and move away from this binary thinking. And I think as white people our work is to be better at checking our ego when we are holding each other accountable. My ego has been way too big at times and I am constantly working on checking myself so I can hold compassionate space instead of jumping into shaming fellow white folks for the same things I have done in the past or may unintentionally do in the future.

Wagatwe Wanjuki also pointed me in the direction of Dr. Clark who wrote Drag Them: A Brief Etymology of So-Called “Cancel Culture.”