By: Ariana Wiggins (’19), Staff Writer
Imagine this: Kanye West declares in an interview that slavery was a choice. A popular bar on Franklin Street creates a discriminatory membership policy. This year has met us with one too many dreadful or questionable events. What is our immediate response to these issues?
That’s right. He’s cancelled, that bar is cancelled and 2018 is cancelled. Lately, “cancel culture” has become so prevalent that it deserves a deeper look. Despite how iconic “College Dropout” may have been, how lit Tequila Tuesday was every week, or how many months are still left in the year, we are typically willing to withdraw our support of anything that conflicts with our values. And even more importantly, we decide to do this as a community, suchlike a boycott.
Yet, there’s one thing we can’t deny: sometimes it’s a struggle to participate in the culture of cancelling. Maybe you actually don’t want to live without listening to “Ignition (Remix)” despite R. Kelly’s pedophilic tendencies. Perhaps Waffle House’s consistently poor service won’t stop you from getting that All-Star breakfast at 2 a.m. this weekend. Whatever the case may be, it opens a few questions worth pondering. Can we separate the artist from the art, can we appreciate the abundant beauty that links arms with bits of ugliness, and is there room for improvement when those that we admire expose their problematic qualities?
If your answer to those questions is a “hell no,” then allow me to play the devil’s advocate. Let’s be reminded that each and every one of us plays a unique role in society and that none of those roles involves being perfect. We live in a world of yin and yang, and regardless of what we’d like to believe, good people sometimes do bad things. When they do those things, the proper response is not to deem them bad people, but to provide constructive feedback and help them grow.
Trust me, I know that in order to protect one another, we can’t tolerate the tomfoolery. And there are some instances where tomfoolery is all there is to gain, in which case, we shouldn’t tolerate it at all (take situationships, for example). But in other instances, there is plenty of room to grow. In order for that growth to take place, we need to have more patience.
With all things considered, I want to bring us back to the concept of cancelling. It’s time to accept that we shouldn’t go around cancelling everything just because we don’t like it. Instead, we should make a change to strengthen us as a community and consider cancelling “cancel culture.”
