Speaker 1: Pushkin, this is solvable. I'm Ronald Young Jr. The way
Speaker 1: cancelation makes it seem like one person is responsible for
Speaker 1: an entire system of behavior, we never get at the system,
Speaker 1: and it allows us to be off the hook that
Speaker 1: we are all participating in the same systems. You may
Speaker 1: have heard them cancel culture a few or many many
Speaker 1: times before. According to Urban Dictionary, cancel culture is defined
Speaker 1: as a modern Internet phenomenon where a person is ejected
Speaker 1: from influencer fame due to questionable actions. It seemed by
Speaker 1: some as a way to hold public figures with power
Speaker 1: accountable for their actions, while others see it as the
Speaker 1: new mob mentality. But people have been canceling other people
Speaker 1: through the ages. Think back to the nineteen fifties with
Speaker 1: Senator Joseph McCarthy blacklisting folks he deemed on a mark,
Speaker 1: and even further back to the Salem witch trials. These days, comedians, politicians,
Speaker 1: authors and actors have been canceled for unacceptable and problematic
Speaker 1: behavior such as racist tweets, inappropriate comments, jokes, allegations of
Speaker 1: sexual misconduct or violence, transphobic and homophobic opinions, and more.
Speaker 1: While the reasons for canceling vary. The quick and indignant
Speaker 1: anger and the mob's desire for swift action hasn't changed.
Speaker 1: But is it right to cancel people? Actually, we don't
Speaker 1: want to cancel people who want to cancel ways of thinking.
Speaker 1: Adrian Marie Brown is the author of We Will Not
Speaker 1: Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice. The culture
Speaker 1: of disposability is a solvable problem, Adrian. You first made
Speaker 1: your thoughts public on cancel culture through a post on
Speaker 1: your website, and that post was entitled Unthinkable Thoughts call
Speaker 1: out culture in the Age of COVID nineteen. What made
Speaker 1: you decide to write that then? Well, I had been away,
Speaker 1: I was on sabbatical, and I've been doing like movement
Speaker 1: related work, organizing for social change, environmental change, economic justice
Speaker 1: for like twenty five years, And when I came back,
Speaker 1: I was inundated with all these messages from people calling
Speaker 1: for the cancelation or deep platforming or something else. Of
Speaker 1: all these people, and none of them were people that
Speaker 1: I necessarily knew. None of them were people that I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, I understand how to hold this person accountable.
Speaker 1: They weren't people of massive power, and so I got
Speaker 1: concerned about that, you know, I was like, well, what's
Speaker 1: happening inside of movement that we are not engaging in
Speaker 1: healthy conflict with each other and figuring out what these
Speaker 1: differences are about, and you know, just having the conversations
Speaker 1: with you to have what's happening that our main way
Speaker 1: of engaging with each other when we do disagree or
Speaker 1: when harm happens is to do a public call out.
Speaker 1: I was worried about that on a lot of levels,
Speaker 1: so I started writing about it, and the very idea
Speaker 1: that I felt nervous to write about it, even that
Speaker 1: felt intriguing to me as someone who you know, I'm like,
Speaker 1: we're trying to fight against people who don't want us
Speaker 1: to live, and in that scenario, I should never feel
Speaker 1: worried about trying to be in any conversation like we've
Speaker 1: got to figure this out because we have to survive.
Speaker 1: I posted the initial blog, which was quite long, and
Speaker 1: the feedback made me convinced that it would be well
Speaker 1: served as a book. The book is We Will Not
Speaker 1: Cancel Us. Who was us to us? That I was
Speaker 1: really thinking of was people who are in social justice movements,
Speaker 1: people who are in space or they've said we are abolitionists,
Speaker 1: we are a feminists, we are post capitalists. We're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out a different way of being in a
Speaker 1: relationship to this planet that is respectful, that will sustain us,
Speaker 1: particularly inside of that pocket, the abolitionist space, you know,
Speaker 1: those of us who believe that there is a way
Speaker 1: that we can be on this planet as a human
Speaker 1: species that doesn't involve prisons and policing, which is in
Speaker 1: the lineage of slavery. Right, there's this body of us
Speaker 1: who believe that, and we're trying to hold down movement
Speaker 1: and create movement to be a space where that's the practice.
Speaker 1: But we're still actually doing these highly punitive measures with
Speaker 1: each other. And so that was the call. We have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to do this some other way
Speaker 1: so that we can break this pattern of disposability. Talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about how you envision transformative and restorative
Speaker 1: justice being a way to replace punitive justice. When someone
Speaker 1: does something wrong, we punish them in any number of ways,
Speaker 1: corporal punishment. We take away their freedom, we take away
Speaker 1: their right to vote. We sometimes physically injure them with
Speaker 1: the death penalty, you know. And it is this binary
Speaker 1: where people are good or bad, meaning that they are
Speaker 1: deserving or not deserving a punishment. If that worked, if
Speaker 1: that worldview worked, then especially with the amount that we have,
Speaker 1: in particularly the US invested in the prison system, we
Speaker 1: should be crime free without harm. Because we punish so
Speaker 1: professionally and so thoroughly, it doesn't work, It doesn't actually
Speaker 1: stop harm from happening. And if you focus on how
Speaker 1: would we stop the harm from happening, then these models
Speaker 1: of restorative justice and transformative justice emerge or can be remembered.
Speaker 1: A lot of these are ways that people long before
Speaker 1: capitalism and colonialism took over the way the world functioned.
Speaker 1: There have been cultures that had other ways of dealing
Speaker 1: with harm when it happened, dealing with conflict when it
Speaker 1: came up. And those ways are both old and ones
Speaker 1: that we need to relearn, and they involve mediation. Being
Speaker 1: able to sit and be held in a conversation that
Speaker 1: you can't handle one to one, have someone else there
Speaker 1: to help move it along, and find the places where
Speaker 1: there's an opening when it feels like it's all a wall.
Speaker 1: There's community circles, community accountability processes where an entire body
Speaker 1: or community can sit and hold both are all members
Speaker 1: of a conflict or a harm and find out what
Speaker 1: is the right move forward, what would actually bring some
Speaker 1: closure and allow healing to begin in the circumstance being
Speaker 1: able to truly hear each other, being able to truly listen,
Speaker 1: and the idea that people can change. People are always
Speaker 1: changing everything that you're saying. It makes sense when you
Speaker 1: talk about in movement, when you're talking about marginalized folks,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about folks fighting for justice within the community.
Speaker 1: But cancel culture is something that it's been coming up
Speaker 1: a lot recently, and there's been a prominent comedian, there's
Speaker 1: been a prominent wrapper, there's been prominent folks. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: been some prominence out there. How do we reconcile the
Speaker 1: members people who are members of marginalized community but in
Speaker 1: some ways are not necessarily fighting on our teams the
Speaker 1: teams of folks that are fighting for justice to us. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one of the things that gets
Speaker 1: teased out with this is how non monolithic we are,
Speaker 1: And I think that's always important for people to understand
Speaker 1: because then the people that we are organizing amongst and
Speaker 1: with and for are also non monolithic. And what we
Speaker 1: have to do is beat in the conversations if we
Speaker 1: care about them, you know. So to me, there's always
Speaker 1: a question of are we calling for this person's cancelation
Speaker 1: because they're causing harm to us? What's actually happening? You know?
Speaker 1: So I look at and R Kelly and I'm like,
Speaker 1: the call there for a cancelation or amusing R Kelly
Speaker 1: is related to staunching the economic flow that supports him
Speaker 1: doing ongoing visceral harm to young girls. And because of
Speaker 1: the resource is that he has access to, he can
Speaker 1: just continue to act. So something else has to stop him,
Speaker 1: right and right, right now, the only move we have
Speaker 1: to stop someone at that level is actually prison, Right,
Speaker 1: it's not cancelation because what we see when people get
Speaker 1: canceled is in a lot of ways, it feeds them.
Speaker 1: It's like more and more attention moves towards them. It
Speaker 1: allows the people who are also staunchly ignorant in the
Speaker 1: same ways, right, like emotionally ignorant, spiritually ignorant, you know,
Speaker 1: economically ignorant, whichever one it is, transphobic, right, it's whichever
Speaker 1: thing they're sitting in. It allows the people who also
Speaker 1: believe that to flock towards them and for them to
Speaker 1: gather together. So that's part of it to be as
Speaker 1: I'm just like, it doesn't work, It doesn't work the
Speaker 1: way we would want it to work. And I have
Speaker 1: seen it work when we're talking about corporations where there's
Speaker 1: a specific ask that's meatable. You know, when that Chappelle
Speaker 1: special came out and everybody's like, whoa you know, having
Speaker 1: this response, Ashley Marie pressed it is this incredible black
Speaker 1: trans organizer, and she was just like, we don't actually
Speaker 1: want to cancel anyone. We want to have a transformative conversation.
Speaker 1: We think that it is possible to move from here
Speaker 1: beyond this. We don't want the conversation with him, We
Speaker 1: want it with Netflix. We want it with the entity,
Speaker 1: the structure that is upholding the culture that allows for
Speaker 1: these decisions to happen. So just the like moving from
Speaker 1: the very specific, you know, the way cancelation makes it
Speaker 1: seem like one person is responsible for an entire system
Speaker 1: of behavior. We never get at the system, and it
Speaker 1: allows us to be off the hook that we are
Speaker 1: all participating in the same systems. Right, So what I'm
Speaker 1: interested in is something that says we're all actually responsible
Speaker 1: for these behaviors, all of them. Child sexual abuse happens
Speaker 1: because many of us look the other way when we
Speaker 1: need to look more closely. Right, rape, sexual assault that
Speaker 1: happens in our communities because we don't listen to the
Speaker 1: survivors because we can, I reckon that the person that
Speaker 1: we love, these men that we love, these people that
Speaker 1: we love, are also doing these things that we hate.
Speaker 1: You know, we participate, we uphold, we look away, we're quiet.
Speaker 1: And so this error that we're living in me too,
Speaker 1: and Black Lives Matter putting a pressure on this pressure
Speaker 1: means actually, we don't want to cancel people. We want
Speaker 1: to cancel ways of thinking. I like it makes sense
Speaker 1: when you say it to me, like it makes sense,
Speaker 1: and I support it. I really do. I wholeheartedly support it.
Speaker 1: And I think the hardest part of this is to
Speaker 1: look in the medium and to listen to someone say, oh,
Speaker 1: they're trying to cancel me, they're trying to do this
Speaker 1: all that, and avoid the actual responsibility that you have
Speaker 1: to engage these conversations. So how do we get there?
Speaker 1: Because we know I know that like the most of
Speaker 1: the fuel behind somebody like Dave Chappelle, most of the
Speaker 1: fuel behind them comes from a lot of transphobia, a
Speaker 1: lot of homophobia, and nobody wants to engage those conversations.
Speaker 1: How do we get them seated at the table? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the things is, and I'll say this,
Speaker 1: I was really politically shaped by Grace Lee Bogs in Detroit,
Speaker 1: and one of the things she taught me was that
Speaker 1: we must transform ourselves to transform the world. And this
Speaker 1: kind of blew my mind because I was very much
Speaker 1: oriented towards like, when we see that someone is acting
Speaker 1: out of alignment, we have to fix them. We have
Speaker 1: to get them together right. We have to get them right.
Speaker 1: And the harder work is we have to get ourselves together.
Speaker 1: We have to figure out why the person thinks it's
Speaker 1: okay to behave this way around us. Right, Like when
Speaker 1: we witness racism, even we're like, I didn't do the
Speaker 1: racist thing, but it's like you witness the racist thing,
Speaker 1: and something in the way you responded made it okay
Speaker 1: for that racist thing to continue and to persist. Right
Speaker 1: with Same with homophobias, same with transphobias, same with all
Speaker 1: of these patterns of behavior, Same with sexual harassment. So
Speaker 1: many places we allow it. So a lot of the practices,
Speaker 1: you know, in some dream World. Yeah, it would be
Speaker 1: great to get Chappelle to sit down with trans people
Speaker 1: and really hear and really take in the way that
Speaker 1: it hurts. You know. I heard him say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to cause any more harm. I'll stop
Speaker 1: telling his jokes until we can laugh together. Right, It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: so you knew that and you did this whole thing. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we can't wait for that. If we wait for that,
Speaker 1: we'll be waiting forever. Right, We're waiting for someone who
Speaker 1: is in a position of privilege and power to of
Speaker 1: their own volition relinquish that. Yeah. Right, it's never going
Speaker 1: to happen, like any move will be to protect that
Speaker 1: space that they've achieved. Instead, we have to have the
Speaker 1: conversations amongst ourselves that make it impossible for the people
Speaker 1: to be up on such pedestals. Anyway. We have the
Speaker 1: conversations amongst ourselves that are like, how we practice with
Speaker 1: each other is what allows trans phobia to persist or
Speaker 1: not persist. So when we feel our friends saying, oh
Speaker 1: the special was fine, great, let me have the conversation
Speaker 1: with you. Let me have the conversation with you, right,
Speaker 1: and to be like I'm going to get in the
Speaker 1: boat with you, and I'm not going to say you're wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say here's how it felt for me
Speaker 1: and listening to it. Yeah, right, we model something different
Speaker 1: where it's like, I'm not interested in canceling everyone in
Speaker 1: the world who thought that specialists fine, I'm interested in
Speaker 1: reaching into that place where their humanity is disconnected, you know,
Speaker 1: and they're not able to see trans people inside of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to feel like, how do I use this
Speaker 1: as an opportunity to reconnect that that humanity, that little
Speaker 1: piece right there. And that goes back to what you're
Speaker 1: saying about being restorative and bringing them back into exactly
Speaker 1: because we are actually a one entity no matter where
Speaker 1: in human time and history. We are like the species.
Speaker 1: What we understand about all species is we function together.
Speaker 1: The bees. It's not like the bees are just like, oh,
Speaker 1: five of us will go extinct. No, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the conditions work for all of us, or they don't
Speaker 1: work for us. And that's the thing our species has
Speaker 1: not mastered. We still think that somehow we'll do hierarchy
Speaker 1: and any of us will survive. We have to survive
Speaker 1: together or we won't make it. And so it's constantly
Speaker 1: trying to get people to understand, to remember that which
Speaker 1: we already knew, and then there were wounds and wounds
Speaker 1: and wounds. If we restore enough, we'll understand we're all together.
Speaker 1: And I think that's when the aliens will call us
Speaker 1: and be like, Okay, I'll figure it out. You are humans.
Speaker 1: You're humans, got it? Finally some adventures for you that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's a quote from your book and it says,
Speaker 1: I want to invite us to get excellent at being
Speaker 1: in conflict, which is a healthy, natural part of being
Speaker 1: human and biodiverse. And I like this quote because it
Speaker 1: does invite for challenging conversations and for us to have tension.
Speaker 1: My question about this one is there are people who
Speaker 1: are going to say this in defense of harmful statements,
Speaker 1: in defense of a people, you know, doing things that
Speaker 1: are enacting harm in the community, And how do we
Speaker 1: not let them weaponize conflict in a way that's not healthy.
Speaker 1: I think that's really I love this question because I
Speaker 1: feel like if I hadn't seen it in nature, I
Speaker 1: don't know that I would understand the answer to it.
Speaker 1: And I feel like it's only by recognizing, like humans
Speaker 1: our nature, and nature has some fundamental rules amongst them.
Speaker 1: That difference is actually one of the things that creates
Speaker 1: a healthy ecosystem. The differences in an ecosystem nourish each other.
Speaker 1: Symbiosis emerges, and that's when life really is popping. Like
Speaker 1: those are the that's they're like, oh, we rain for us, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's exciting right to be there. But
Speaker 1: if there's something that is toxic to that system, then
Speaker 1: literally the entire ecosystem organizes itself to protect itself and
Speaker 1: to really keep that toxic substance out. And I think
Speaker 1: we have to look at it that way. It's like I,
Speaker 1: for me, I don't think that a person can be
Speaker 1: that toxic substance, but I think people's ideas and behaviors
Speaker 1: can bring that toxicity into community. And I think that's
Speaker 1: where then we have to be able to say, hold on,
Speaker 1: we don't allow that behavior in this space. Can you
Speaker 1: let that behavior go? We see in nature all the
Speaker 1: time things can be restored. There is healing that is possible.
Speaker 1: This is one of the ways that humans used to
Speaker 1: be in a much more symbiotic, wholesome relationship with Earth,
Speaker 1: is that we used to for instance, when we were
Speaker 1: gathering wood, we would cut a portion from the tree,
Speaker 1: not cut down a tree, so that the tree remained
Speaker 1: and it gave what it could give and continue growing.
Speaker 1: If we think of it that way, where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: everything can handle some portion being taken away, what is
Speaker 1: it for us? I think that we get lost in this.
Speaker 1: I feel like, as humans, we think our biodiversity is
Speaker 1: a weakness, and that if we are in spaces where
Speaker 1: many of us or many ideas thrive, we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: going to fight with each other in a way that's
Speaker 1: so uncomfortable we can't bear it. But I'm like, we
Speaker 1: should at least try it. We should try being uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: The discomfort is usually because there's an old idea or
Speaker 1: an old way of being that is too small for
Speaker 1: who your spirit and soul actually want to be. We
Speaker 1: constantly expand over the course of our lives. Our minds,
Speaker 1: our comprehension, our ability to handle difference expands more and more.
Speaker 1: That's the beauty of our species. So that to me
Speaker 1: is what's inside of it. Is like, the idea is
Speaker 1: to have as much biodiversity, as much difference in the
Speaker 1: community as possible. But not to allow harm to persist
Speaker 1: in the community, because the harm impacts the entire ecosystem negatively. Adrian,
Speaker 1: one of the things I really enjoined in your book
Speaker 1: was that you talked about when a callout can be useful.
Speaker 1: You say callouts can feel most powerful full when they
Speaker 1: are used with their tactical intention for those with less
Speaker 1: positional political, economic, or other power to demand accountability to
Speaker 1: stop harm or abuse, which I appreciate, and I think
Speaker 1: you laid that out perfectly with the way that you
Speaker 1: were talking about r Kelly, how do we make the
Speaker 1: distinction between call out, cancelation, and consequences because I hear
Speaker 1: all three of them being used interchangeably, especially in media
Speaker 1: and especially by people who are trying to get themselves
Speaker 1: out of consequences. Oh, I love it. I think we're
Speaker 1: still in the birthing stages of figuring out what all
Speaker 1: these things are. And that's why people are like, it's
Speaker 1: a whole culture of this, it's a whole culture of that.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, this is in the culture. You know,
Speaker 1: we are in some ways. Cancelation is in the culture, right,
Speaker 1: and the culture is steeped in a punitive culture. So
Speaker 1: it's like cancelation is just the peak of a certain
Speaker 1: kind of wave that's happening in the culture, but it's
Speaker 1: not the only thing that's happening in the culture. And
Speaker 1: I think what we actually need is an accountability culture
Speaker 1: or a culture of consequences where it's like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: true that you actually did this thing. We know that
Speaker 1: it's true, and here's something, here's what a consequence can
Speaker 1: actually look like. When I think of a call out,
Speaker 1: the call out functions as an isolating tool instead of
Speaker 1: a tool of community. And I think that's where when
Speaker 1: some people use the terms call in, the idea is
Speaker 1: like it's actually supposed to be bringing people deeper into community,
Speaker 1: into a space where they can actually be held, versus,
Speaker 1: you know, something where it's like we actually don't want
Speaker 1: this person have access to community. I think a consequence though,
Speaker 1: to me, a consequence is when it's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: can draw a direct line, like I really can see
Speaker 1: this consequence makes sense based on what happened. You know
Speaker 1: what this person did. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: times what we're missing is there's no veracity around what
Speaker 1: actually happened. We don't know, right, and then there's no
Speaker 1: clarity on like, what is the consequence. Is it taking
Speaker 1: one year out of the spotlight? You know, is it
Speaker 1: taking a year off of Instagram or whatever? Because that's
Speaker 1: about you know what I've been noted sing as the
Speaker 1: patterns people kind of dip out for a year and
Speaker 1: then you see them come back like everything's great, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't talk about that other thing. Yeah we don't,
Speaker 1: you know, and a lot of and they just move on.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, we need I'm always interested in like
Speaker 1: what actually works. If that strategy worked, you know, if
Speaker 1: it was like dang, we called these people out and
Speaker 1: rape just stopped, like it's not happening anymore. This really worked?
Speaker 1: You know. Miriam Kabba is someone that I always point
Speaker 1: people towards. She is an incredible teacher around abolition, particularly
Speaker 1: prison abolition, and she really talks about that long, long
Speaker 1: pattern of harm doing continues in spite of this system
Speaker 1: of punitive justice, you know, in spite of all those efforts,
Speaker 1: and she's like, we should just be focused on how
Speaker 1: we end the harm. That's the only measure. Did the
Speaker 1: harm end or did it not end? And I think
Speaker 1: that helps in a lot of these conversations because people
Speaker 1: get into some moral high ground space, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's not working, you know, like fundamentally it's not working,
Speaker 1: so it can't be the right way. I can talk
Speaker 1: about this with you or I really appreciate you writing
Speaker 1: this book. Adrian Murrie Brown, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being with us today. Wow, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: This is a great conversation. Adrian Marie Brown is the
Speaker 1: author of We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams
Speaker 1: of Transformative Justice. She's the co host of the podcasts
Speaker 1: How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia's Parables
Speaker 1: and Emergent Strategy Listeners. If you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about the solutions we talked about today, I highly recommend
Speaker 1: Adrian's book We Will Not Cancel Us, and you could
Speaker 1: find links to her other books, as well as articles
Speaker 1: on conflict resolution, restorative justice practices, truth and reconciliation, non
Speaker 1: violent communication, and to more information about the leaders and
Speaker 1: mentors Brown mentioned in this conversation. They're all in our
Speaker 1: show notes. Solvable is produced by Jocelyn Frank, research by
Speaker 1: David Jah, booking by Lisa Dunn, editing help from Keshelle Williams.
Speaker 1: Very special thanks to Tanzina Vega for pointing me to
Speaker 1: Adrian Marie Brown's work. Our managing producer is Sasha Matthias,
Speaker 1: and our executive producer is Mio La Belle. I'm Ronald
Speaker 1: Young Junior. Thanks for listening.