UNITED STATES—There has been this discussion of cancel culture for quite some time now, but it does feel like things are becoming tense and tenser to the point that is beyond concerning people. How can I best define cancel culture? It is like policing free speech, but to a point of extreme that is almost at times unfathomable. Here is the thing I’m going to point out: if someone does something racist, violent and just unspeakable where it inflicts absolute and direct harm onto another individual, there should be consequences for those actions.
We cannot just sweep things under the rug as if it never happened. However, at the same time people do deserve the opportunity to repent and ask for forgiveness. That forgiveness should be tact with the person learning from his or her mistakes and not just putting on a PR stunt. For those not in the know ‘PR’ refers to public relations and this is more common with celebrities. It is like every single week we learn about a celebrity scandal and the next thing you know this manufactured apology is issued. Usually thru social media so the entire world can see it and digest it people.
Publicists are the best at putting a spin on the situation, but if you look carefully at some celebs you can see the forced attrition; where you only regret because you are forced to do it. However, we can’t just go around canceling everything because we’re becoming the speech police. Look, if you don’t like something someone says that is fine and dandy you are entitled to feel a certain way, but at the same time there is a thing we have called freedom of speech. It is indeed a constitutional amendment one that people tout more than you know, but don’t fully understand exactly what it means and what limits there are.
This is not me saying everything people say is protected speech. I’m a firm believer if a person says something racist, homophobic, ethnically or culturally insensitive, attacks one religion or incite or push violence in any form of fashion, is NOT ACCEPTABLE. If someone just disagrees with one’s feelings about a particular issue that is no need to cancel them. People are going to disagree that is the world we live in. Disagreements between people is good for dialogue, dialogue is good for us to seek change in the world. If everyone just agreed on everything do you realize how terrible this country would be? I don’t even want to imagine such a thing people.
Also let’s pause with being ‘woke.’ Yeah, it is a term some of you know and some of you don’t know it is where people are ultra-sensitive to everything. That is leading to the cancel culture narrative we live in now. Instead of cancelling people immediately for bad behavior or inappropriate speech, how about we have a teaching moment. Let’s teach the person why what he or she did is inappropriate in hopes they grasp the issue to begin with. Some people are ignorant and uneducated and by teaching them they can learn about their wrongs and make things right. If you just cancel them, guess what, they don’t learn from their mistake and are likely to repeat that pattern America.
Also stop with the political theater. Jeez, I hate politicians sometimes because it is all a strategy game when they say and do certain things. It is like watching all these various news stations where they push the stories they want to hear and ignore other issues because of how they think they will be depicted in the public sphere. You cannot pick and choose; at least you should NOT being doing that as legit and serious journalists. Rather liberal or conservative, if someone DOES SOMETHING WRONG, no matter how much you might not like it, you still need to report it.
Everything in our society today is so politically determined that politics are dictating cancel culture and it’s unacceptable. Stop canceling people or pushing a cause because you have the theory it is going to make you look good in the limelight. That is the major problem again with cancel culture; it’s also dictated by social media. Everything you do, so, retweet like is seen on social media. Yes, it’s a great form of communication, but I think so many people, just don’t realize how dangerous social media is. So many people stick their foot in their mouths as a direct result of social media and cancel culture is being directly linked to it.
There have been a lot of people cancelled as of late, and when you do wrong you have to atone for that sin, but at the same time that should not mean you are obliterated from redemption especially if you made a mistake and didn’t know better. Learn from the mistake; make the effort to be and to do better. Otherwise, we are doing what has been argued from the beginning time. Failure to address the past will lead to the same repeated actions of the future. Do wrong, learn from it and do better in the future people.
Written By Jason Jones
