COLUMN: Viewpoint – What is cancel culture?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/07/2020 (1745 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I’ve been hearing the term cancel culture so often lately. What does it mean? The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as cancelling an entertainer, a political figure, a businessperson, an organization or an institution by ending your support of them. You do so because they expressed a belief or acted in a way you find unacceptable.

Some Canadian examples would be refusing to buy clothing made by Peter Nygard’s company because he has been accused of sex trafficking or taking down the statue of Egerton Ryerson at Toronto’s Ryerson University because Ryerson was the architect of Canada’s residential school system. It might be changing the name of Cecil Rhodes School in Winnipeg because Rhodes believed in the superiority of the white race or cancelling your season tickets to the Edmonton Eskimo football team because their name doesn’t show respect for Inuit people.

The Mennonite Church just decided to remove seven popular pieces of music from a new hymnal they are publishing because the composer has been accused of abusing his power in church music circles, making women feel they needed to exchange sexual favours for a chance to get ahead professionally. I know people who refused to travel to the United States after Donald Trump was elected President because they felt he was racist, had treated women disrespectfully, and was using his political position to benefit his family fortune.

Erin O Toole who is running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, has promised if he becomes Prime Minister, he will end cancel culture. I am not exactly sure how he is going to achieve that but it’s a promise he is making. He says in a campaign video that all people and institutions have both good and bad aspects and we can’t try to erase their legacy because of the things they have done that are questionable particularly when they have also done things that are praiseworthy and important.

He gives the example of Sir John A McDonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister who was instrumental in building a railroad that united our country. Of course, MacDonald did so by illegally expropriating indigenous land and having Chinese workers sacrifice their lives doing slave labour to construct it. Despite the negative aspects of his legacy, which are many, O Toole thinks MacDonald still deserves to be honoured with statues and other symbols for his important contributions to Canadian history.

American artist Titus Kaphar has proposed an interesting alternative to cancel culture that involves adding things instead of removing them. You might call it additional culture. I saw an example on my last visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario where at least one work by an indigenous artist has been added to every room. I see it in the world of children’s writing where books by indigenous writers and illustrators like David Robertson and Julie Flett, are given publishing priority so their work can be added to the canon of children’s literature. Additional culture might mean putting up a statue of Cindy Blackstock the indigenous activist who has fought so long and hard for the welfare of indigenous children beside a statue of Sir John A MacDonald who called indigenous children savages and ordered them taken from their parents. We could name the next new schools we build after people like Black Canadian baseball legend Ferguson Jenkins or Rosemary Brown the first Black provincial legislator in Canada.

We may still need to employ some cancel culture to set the historical record straight but perhaps we can also consider how additional culture might provide an alternative course of action.