Cancel This Book

The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture

Dan Kovalik

• Publisher: Hot Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781510764996
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Corruption & Misconduct
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Examining a phenomenon that is sweeping the country, Cancel This Book shines the spotlight on the suppression of open and candid debate. The public shaming of individuals for actual or perceived offenses, often against emerging notions of proper racial and gender norms and relations, has become commonplace. In a number of cases, the shaming is accompanied by calls for the offending individuals to lose their jobs, positions, or other status. Frequently, those targeted for "cancellation" simply do not know the latest, ever-changing norms (often related to language) that they are accused of transgressing—or they have honest questions about issues that have been deemed off-limits for debate and discussion. Cancel This Book offers a unique perspective from Dan Kovalik, a progressive author who supports the ongoing movements for racial and gender equality and justice, but who is concerned about the prevalence of "cancelling" people, and especially of people who are well-intentioned and who are themselves allied with these movements. While many progressives believe that "cancelling" others is a form of activism and holding others accountable, Cancel This Book argues that "cancellation" is oftentimes counter-productive and destructive of the very values which the "cancellers" claim to support. And indeed, we now see instances in the workplace where employers are using this spirt of "cancellation" to pit employees against each other, to exert more control over the workforce and to undermine worker and labor solidarity. Kovalik observes that many progressives are quietly opposed to this "Cancel Culture" and to many instances of "cancellation" they witness, but they are afraid to air these concerns publicly lest they themselves be "cancelled." The result is the suppression of open debate about important issues involving racial and gender matters, and even issues related to how to best confront the current COVID-19 pandemic. While people speak in whispers about their true feelings about such issues, critical debate and discussion is avoided, resentments build, and the movement for justice and equality is ultimately disserved.

CHAPTER ONE

Importance of Speaking Freely

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.

—Carl Jung

When I was in law school at Columbia University, I had the good fortune of learning from a professor named john a. powell, an African American and a lawyer, at that time, for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The class he taught was about balancing free speech rights under the First Amendment with the rights to equality embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment and the civil rights statutes that followed—sets of rights that powell argues are of great and equal value, though sometimes very hard to reconcile when they find themselves in competition, such as in the case of offensive, discriminatory speech.¹ The tension arises from such speech, of course, because, though the individual has the right to free expression, such expression may infringe on others’ rights, and particularly on others’ rights to be included and to participate equally in the institution or forum in which the speech is being made. It is this right of participation that, powell argues, should be protected in resolving this tension.

As Professor powell has argued:

There is reason to believe or construct a notion of harm that is similar in both contexts and that is not so broad that it destroys free speech or equality. Not all harms are to be avoided, but only a limited class of harms. I have identified the central harm that is to be avoided as the harm to participation and membership and, as a corollary, the harm to communicative self-respect and autonomy. There are other harms, such as offense, that will not rise to this level. I have argued that the harm which undermines, distorts, or destroys the ability to participate in critical institutions and locations is of the first order and should be cognizable in and regulated by our jurisprudence. . . .

Free speech and equality should be promoted by this approach, in part, because they support, and are necessary for participation. When there is a sharp conflict between free speech and equality, I would try to resolve the tension in a way that protects the right of participation.²

In short, speech that offends, but does not interfere with another’s right of participation, should not be banned or otherwise suppressed. Rather, such speech, as I took from Professor powell’s class, should be met with speech; with argument and dialogue, as a means to advance both free speech and hopefully equality, as well. Such dialogue is especially important, and especially possible, when the speaker is at least well-intentioned, though possibly ill-informed or mistaken about proper semantics. Professor powell, who comes from a place of deep compassion, argues that such people should be treated with understanding and empathy, rather than with judgment and derision.

In a recent talk he gave in a symposium titled “Belonging in Practice: How to be an Antiracist,” Professor powell specifically addressed the question about “cancel culture” in the following way:

And just one thing that I want. . . . The ability to make mistakes, to be held in love. And I think the culture that we’re in right now, we oftentimes think it’s better to call someone out than to call them in. And we actually score points, especially on Twitter and Facebook. And so we make it very dangerous to say something. Because even if we are trying, often times there’s a community that’s like waiting for you to make a slip. And there’s a gotcha. And I’m not saying we give people a pass. But if people are working, work with them. So that’s one thing, how do we actually create a space where we’re gonna hold each other accountable but we’re gonna hold each other, we’re gonna love each other, we’re gonna care about each other. You belong in this community and part of the thing, you will make mistakes but you also will grow.

Similarly, at the very same symposium, Ibram X. Kendi, who was described by the event organizers as “one of America’s leading anti-racist voices and the author of How to Be an Antiracist,” stated, “those who are constantly growing and striving to be a better form of themselves are constantly recognizing and admitting their mistakes, and constantly seeking to be better for them. And so, I think that we should take the pressure off of our backs to essentially be perfect. But we should simultaneously do that for other people. And so, an anti-racist doesn’t just recognize that they’re gonna make mistakes. They’re gonna allow other people to make mistakes.”

If the goal of activism is to win people over to a cause in order to organize protest and to win reforms and change, it is the softer approach—rather than an approach of finger wagging, shaming, and cancelling—that is more effective. There is indeed empirical evidence for this.

For example, a 2020 study of 700 interactions between liberal campaign activists and potential voters demonstrated that “the practice of having non-judgmental, in-depth conversations with voters about their experiences and struggles was 102 times more effective” in actually convincing these voters than brief, “drive-by” interactions.³ And the former, more empathetic approach was effective in communities often ignored, if not vilified, by liberals and the left. As one individual who participated in this study explains:

These results are transformative and tell us a different story about rural America. For so long, people in rural and small towns have been neglected and cast out because no one took the time to listen to them, . . . But we did, and we’ve found that compassion and empathy, rather than division and hatred, can lead us to a multiracial democracy that works for all of us.

Another incredible example of the power of persuasion through empathy and compassion is the story of Daryl Davis, an African American who, beginning in the 1980s and continuing for the next 30 years, befriended members of the KKK in order to convince them to leave the organization and to see people of color in a different way.⁴ Ultimately, Mr. Davis convinced 200 Klan members to give up their robes. Many would consider such an effort as naive, impossible, and not worth it and would cancel such Klan members instead. Indeed, it is my perception that many on the left get a thrill from canceling and physically confronting such people—people who often come to their racist beliefs through ignorance—resulting in racists simply doubling down on their bigotry.

That the “unwashed masses” of the hinterlands can be reached was proven again over the summer of 2020 when we saw people coming out to march in support of Black lives in such largely white towns as Lexington, Kentucky; College Station, Texas; Des Moines, Iowa; and Omaha, Nebraska.⁵

Even Hazard, Kentucky—remember The Dukes of Hazard?—had a BLM protest in which hundreds of people participated.⁶ Speaking of The Dukes of Hazard, I have to point out a fascinating fact from my own life. When I was attending high school in the mid-80s at a Catholic school in Cincinnati, Moeller High School, one of the African American students, Hiawatha Francisco, who happened to be our school’s star running back, used to drive a perfect replica of “The General Lee,” which the Duke boys drove on the show. This bright orange Dodge Charger, complete with a Confederate flag on the top, played “Dixie” when Hiawatha honked the horn, just as in the show. We thought nothing of this then, except that we all thought it was so cool. I imagine that Hiawatha would be expelled today for insisting on driving that to school.

Meanwhile, even Ammon Bundy, the antigovernment activist who led the 41-day armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho in 2016, was won over to the cause of Black Lives Matter and the demand to “defund the police.”⁷

In short, it turns out that the “deplorables”—the term Hillary Clinton used to describe and cancel the white working-class people of middle America’s small and rural towns—are not so deplorable.

I have had my own experience with these alleged “deplorables” during my 26-year tenure as an attorney for the United Steelworkers union (USW). My first boss there was the legendary Bernie Kleiman, who served the union as general counsel for decades. Bernie was a fascinating individual. As a Jew growing up in northern Indiana, he was often the victim of anti-Semitic bullying. This made him quite empathetic to others, such as Black Americans, who were similarly treated. As a young man, Bernie single-handedly desegregated the local businesses of his northern Indiana town.

What he discovered is that the white business owners there were not, as individuals, opposed to serving Blacks in their establishments. Rather, they did not want to have a competitive disadvantage with other businesses by doing so. Bernie came up with the solution. He went to each store owner and asked him to sign a pledge saying that he would open his business to Blacks if every other store owner signed on to the agreement. Bernie was able to get all the store owners to agree to this, and the color line was thereby broken. This was the first of Bernie’s many collective bargaining experiences, and it showed how a little creativity can be used to deal with thorny issues such as racist business practices.

For much of my tenure at the USW, I was assigned to District 8, the union’s Appalachian district that included West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland. I cannot tell you how many times local union guys from this district came to my office, dressed in Harley Davidson t-shirts, many of which included an American flag, and liberally tattooed with eagles and other patriotic images.

Upon first sight, and upon first hearing their Appalachian twang, many would assume these individuals to be ignorant, bigoted rubes. However, I almost invariably found them to be intelligent, progressive, and tolerant people. Indeed, it was my observation, and that of the other union staff I worked with, that industrial unionization and activity—which requires workers of all races, genders, and backgrounds to work together in common cause—inevitably made workers less racist and sexist.

The USW as an institution was founded in the 1930s as an industrial union dedicated to organizing all workers in the steel industry, regardless of race and ethnicity. This represented a huge move forward at the time from the old craft unions that had organized only skilled labor—a form of organization that inevitably privileged white workers given that Black workers had been excluded from skilled jobs due to racism, and the craft unions worked in ways to guarantee that this racial exclusion continued. In organizing workers on an industrial basis, the USW and like unions helped to raise the standard of living for all workers, both white and Black.

Someone who understood the importance of the union struggle to the cause of African Americans was the great jurist Thurgood Marshall, who argued the case for the plaintiffs before the Supreme Court in the case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The Supreme Court, agreeing with Marshall, ruled that the racist “separate but equal” education system in the Jim Crow South did not comport with the requirements of the US Constitution. Marshall had spent years patiently and methodically teeing up this case, which ultimately led to the dismantling of legal segregation in the US.

Marshall became the first African American Supreme Court Justice. And, when he had the chance to rule on an important labor case—that of Letter Carriers v. Austin 418 U.S. 268 (1975)—he did so seemingly with great delight. Thus, in ruling that a union’s use of the word scab—a term used to describe a worker who refuses to join a union or who crosses a union picket line—was protected by the First Amendment, he quoted with approval the following piece on this subject by Jack London:

The Scab

After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab.

A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.

When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and Angels weep in Heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out.

No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with. Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his Master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab has not.

Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commission in the British Army. The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife, his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled promise from his employer.

“Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country; a SCAB is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class.”

Scabs were considered so awful at one point in the not-so-distant past that James Earl Jones, playing Few Clothes in the legendary Matewan— the 1987 movie by John Sayles about the real-life struggle of Appalachian, Black, and Italian immigrant mineworkers who come together to try to build a union, only to be massacred—exclaims during one tense scene, “I’ve been called n*****, and I can’t help that’s the way white folks is, but I ain’t never been called no scab!”

While the USW did not always live up to its principle as a nonracist union, it did contribute in many ways to making the industrial shop, and the society at large, more inclusive. For example, the USW contributed to the defense fund of civil rights activists in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, the USW fought for affirmative action in hiring, going all the way to the Supreme Court to defend its agreement with steel companies to engage in just such hiring. The USW was ultimately successful in this case, known as United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193 (1979)—a landmark case in which the Court held that such affirmative action is consistent with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in employment.

Carl Frankel, an older colleague of mine in the USW Legal Department, was quite proud of his work on this case that upheld the USW’s attempt to rectify the historic discrimination in the industrial sector, which had for so long kept Blacks out of the mills entirely, and later relegated them to the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs when they finally began to be hired. An excellent resource on the struggle of Black workers for equality, dignity, and better jobs in the steel mills is Struggles in Steels—a documentary by fellow Pittsburgher Tony Buba.

The affirmative action policies upheld in the Weber case opened up opportunities for Black workers never seen before in this country and helped lift many Blacks out of poverty and into the middle class. The tragedy, though, is that these policies were put in place not too long before the huge steel mill shutdowns in the early 1980s, causing the job losses of tens of thousands of steelwo...