How to end cancel culture

Austin Davis, who’s in the running to become Pennsylvania’s first Black lieutenant governor, said reprehensible things a decade ago. They’re degrading and insulting, not to mention racist and misogynistic.

Should he be canceled for them? Absolutely not.

More dangerous to our society than Davis’ mean-spirited and arrogant tweets is mob rule. But you can’t blame some on the right for wanting to see Davis canceled. Everyone knows if Davis were a Republican instead of a Democrat, he’d be a political footnote instead of a candidate.

Conservatives are justified in wanting to hold the left to their own rules. The progressive hypocrisy of selectively calling out racism and other societal harms is galling and dangerous. It’s what makes cancel culture so toxic.

Discourse and debate are the cornerstones of a well-functioning democracy. Mob rule and factionalism can lead to a free society’s demise. Venezuela, once a vibrant successful democracy, voted in a leftist tyranny. The mob demanded a government that jailed political opponents, violently killed dissenters, and turned a blind eye to rigged elections.

“The progressive hypocrisy of selectively calling out racism and other societal harms is galling and dangerous.”

We’re not there. But can we see any warning signs in the attempted assassination of a Supreme Court justice after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade and in the Jan. 6, 2021, riots? Radical politics requires radical generosity toward those with whom we disagree — if we are to remain a free and civil society that does not descend into violence. Are we not a people defined by the willingness to spend our lives fighting against what another has said, but give our lives to defend her right to say it? Instead of being hypersensitive fragilistas, perhaps we could give that good old-fashioned American paradox a try again.

But how? Start by engaging in the democratic process by first defending people’s right to be awful. Then use that right to point out just how awful someone’s words or deeds are. Accept that you have freedom of speech, not freedom from offense. A free society best holds people accountable in the arena of ideas. When we trade debate for the dehumanizing act of cancellation, we head down a dangerous path — even if the person who would be canceled has behaved in a dehumanizing way toward others.

Canceling those with opinions most people deem morally wrong and socially unacceptable (racism, misogyny) leads to a permissiveness in simply labeling speech we do not like as those very things without any reason or recourse. Worse, cancel culture is creating a society where dissenting or unpopular opinions become a risk. Canceling isn’t about debate but dehumanizing.

Speech is free. The consequences are not. Actress Constance Wu attempted suicide after she was canceled in 2019 for publicly tweeting she didn’t love her job on a hit TV show. Her words harmed no one, but she was publicly excoriated for them. Private DMs from her fellow Asian actresses telling her she was a “blight” on the Asian American community made her believe she didn’t deserve to live. Wu didn’t lose her job for her words, but she nearly lost her life.

Cancel culture does more than make the sinner pay a penance. It offers none of the healing redemption necessary for a free and civil society. In America, we have always believed in second chances. It is the basis for the bipartisan work on issues like criminal justice reform. Our achievements here have been a bright spot.

We as a civil society want to give the formerly incarcerated a second chance. How about doing the same for each other?

A lesson on how to begin can be found by journeying back to a blues bar in the 1980s. There we would find Daryl Davis conversing with a Ku Klux Klansman. Davis, a Black man, would spend the next three decades continuing that conversation with numerous Klansmen. He debated and befriended them. He gave them a safe space to air their views and ask questions. The fruit of Mr. Davis’ efforts? Roughly 200 Klansmen renounced their robes. He turned enemies into allies.

» READ MORE: Cancel culture punishes young people for speaking their minds | Opinion

Canceling isn’t reserved for progressives — conservatives have their own cancel culture as well. Colin Kaepernick comes to mind.

I tell my children you treat people respectfully not because of who they are but who you are. If we are tired of divisiveness and incivility, we need to stop expecting others to deliver us.

We’re a nation conceived in individual liberty. We have the right and responsibility, then, to contribute to a free and civil society. It’s time to act accordingly and make canceling a relic of the past, not part of our enduring culture. The next time you want to shame someone and cancel them from public life, first ask yourself, what are you so afraid of?

Jennifer Stefano is the executive vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation and a fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.